The Other Side of Reality
by nightwalker3
Summary: "We never really got around to the rescuing part of this fiasco."
1. Kurama Gets in Some Trouble

**Warnings:** Violence and scenes of extreme grossness. Blood abounding. Dismemberment. Demons (if this bothers you, you're probably in the wrong fandom...) Some coarse language.

**Author's Notes:** If you'veplayed Silent Hill you'll get the minor crossover. If you haven't, then you don't need to worry about it. I borrowed the setting from the game, but not the plot, or the characters.

This one's for Sonnet, who really knows how to pester a person until they give in. Hope you like it.

* * *

**The Other Side of Reality**

Dead or alive, Kurama had long since determined, everyone appreciated a hot shower. Well, amongst humans anyway, and the more discerning demons.

Kurama could admit that he tended to, well, primp a bit. He liked being clean, which was a trait he wished some of his colleagues would adopt for themselves. Sometimes working with Yuusuke and Kuwabara got terribly difficult on the senses. Nothing could offend quite as easily as teenaged boys, especially when they were sweating and covered in demon guts and gore.

He closed the bathroom door behind him quietly, biting back a yawn that was more psychological than anything else. They'd been working the last few days straight, with barely time to eat and grab a few naps. Kurama wasn't prone to exhaustion the way his human partner was – he didn't really sleep anymore anyway, though he had noticed a distinct decline in his ability to process things rationally if he didn't stop and meditate for a few hours every couple of days.

Amongst the many things he hadn't had time for in the last few days was a hot shower, and Kurama meant to remedy that immediately.

The house he and Kuwabara had "inherited" from Jiro was newer, with a Western style of architecture and design which was not displeasing. The lack of proper bathing facilities was disappointing, but in a pinch anything involving hot water would do.

Kurama reached up to pull back the shower curtain – where Shizuru had found a fox motif in bathroom décor, he couldn't image, but he was willing to believe she'd go so far as to have it specially made if she thought it'd get a reaction out of him – and set the water running.

The hiss of water through pipes, and the rain-like spatter of water over the basin of the shower was relaxing. Kurama turned the hot water all the way on, enjoying the feel of steam against his skin. He straightened up, reaching for the belt of his robe, and saw the writing on the wall.

Thick red marks had been drawn on the shower wall with what looked like paint – here and there the marks even dripped as if the painter had not bothered to remove the excess paint from his brush. A wide circle, easily four feet in radius, with another, smaller circle painted directly inside it. A third circle was painted inside that one, with space between the two for a collection of what looked like occult script.

Kurama turned the water off with a sigh.

The symbols were angular, almost runic, and they looked a little familiar. Kurama bit his lip as he leaned over the tub to examine the markings more closely. He couldn't place them, but he was willing to bet he'd seen something very much like it at some point in his career. It'd come to him. In the meantime, who was going around painting things on his bathroom wall?

His first impulse was to eliminate it. Strange occult symbols rarely meant anything good, and _circular_ occult symbols often spoke of summoning circles or portals – neither of which Kurama wanted in his bathroom. He had a mental image of someone trying to summon him in the middle of a shower, or netherworld entities attacking while Kuwabara was brushing his teeth. Both were definitely scenarios to avoid, although the latter might be fun if he had a camera with him at the time.

He licked his index finger and rubbed at the marks on the outer circle. None of the paint came off on his finger, and the marks themselves didn't smudge. It had been there long enough to thoroughly dry then, and the water from the shower hadn't disturbed it at all. Well, a little industrial cleaner and a scouring pad should do the trick. Or to be on the safe side he could just knock out the wall. Not that they could really afford to _fix_ it afterwards, but all things considered he was pretty sure Kuwabara would see things his way.

Behind him, the door clicked shut.

Kurama straightened, glancing over his shoulder at the door.

The bathroom door was crisscrossed with thick metal chains, bolted to the wall and connected to one another with padlocks. Thick metal plates had been drilled into the door and the chains hooked through these as well. The chains were thick, and solid-looking, not thin or delicate like regular chain-locks. These chains were the sort that would be used to hoist heavy machinery up a mountain. Or restrain a demon.

And Kurama was prepared to swear they hadn't been on the door just a few minutes ago. Someone had put those there _after_ he entered the bathroom. It was so impossible it was laughable, but it had happened.

He eyed the small room warily, seeing nothing, sensing nothing except a growing sense of alarm. His senses told him he was alone in the room. Not that the knowledge made him feel any better.

With a wary glance at the markings on the shower wall, Kurama stepped over to the door, and reached for the doorknob. It was cold under his hand, and refused to turn. He shook the door, but it didn't even rattle.

Something groaned.

Kurama turned, eyes drawn to the cupboard beneath the sink. Something hissed, the sound growing slowly into a wild, guttural hacking.

_The hell with this_. He slammed his shoulder against the door, throwing all his demon strength into the action. The door didn't move, and he was pretty sure he'd bruised himself.

Whatever was under the sink was clawing at the wood now.

Kurama took a step back and kicked at the door, slamming his heal against the wood directly above the doorknob. His foot connected with a door that felt like solid concrete. Not even a rattle. The door didn't budge.

"This," Kurama said resignedly, "is exactly the sort of day I didn't want to have."

The cabinet door bumped open slightly, banging shut again instantly. It bumped again, harder this time, long enough for something to stick its head out. It was small, and a raw, bleeding, pink, chunks of fur still clinging to the flesh. It turned to look at him, a blank face with no eyes or nose, and when it bared its teeth in a sibilant hiss, the teeth were jagged and pointed. It climbed out of the cabinets, and Kurama resisted the urge to press back against the door.

It was the size of a small dog, with pointed ears like a wolf or fox. Its face was blank except for the mouth, and along its torso a pair of human arms extended, fingers grasping at the air. There was no tail, just a ragged wound where one seemed to have been cut off.

The mouth opened and a thick, forked tongue lashed at the air as the creature turned to face Kurama.

"Most people have roaches," he sighed, slipping his fingers through his hair and summoning the rosewhip to hand. 

The creature turned toward the sound, panting slightly around the thick tongue, and Kurama could see flecks of white at the mouth. _A rabid hellbeast. Even better_.

He moved before it could, the rosewhip lashing out and catching the beast around the torso. With a flick of his wrist the whip cut through the bloody flesh, and the creature screamed as it was cut in half. With another abrupt movement, Kurama silenced it permanently.

Warily, he approached the creature, making sure it was dead before he risked opening the cabinets. It was empty now, but the inside was ruined. They didn't keep much there aside from a few basic toiletries and liquid plumber, but blood smears and chunks of matted fur decorated the inside of the cabinet. Everything in there would have to be thrown away – and the cabinet itself cleaned thoroughly.

Kurama crouched on the balls of his feet, arms resting on his knees, the rosewhip wrapped around his hands and studied the remains of the creature. "Where did you come from?" he asked. "Or should I be asking who put you here?"

He was starting to get a very bad feeling about the situation.

Then the wall began bleeding.

The red symbols on the shower wall were running. Red liquid dripped down the wall in a steadily growing flow, gathering in the shower basin and pooling. Copper tang struck his nose and he grimaced at the scent of blood.

_That… was probably to be expected._

It was definitely time to call in the reinforcements. Passing the shower he slammed his hand against the bathroom door with every bit of strength he had at his command. The chains didn't even jingle. "Kuwabara! _Kuwabara-kun!_"

A clatter, like falling rocks. Or like plaster striking a shower basin.

He wrapped a chain around his hand and pulled experimentally, testing the strength of the bolts. By all rights he should have been able simply pull them out of the wall – the chains may have been strong, but the day he wasn't strong enough to splinter wood Kurama would retire – but nothing so much as budged. He kicked at the door again. "_Kuwabara! _Wake up!"

Unfortunately his partner wasn't the lightest sleeper. Kuwabara would probably sleep through an atomic bomb, or the demonic invasion of earth, assuming no one tried to grab his blankets. Assuming you could avoid triggering his sixth sense.

Behind him, a chunk of the wall fell into the shower basin with a splash.

Something was growling under the cabinet again.

* * *

tbc

c&c welcomed and appreciated.


	2. Kuwabara Calls the Cavalry

**Disclaimer: **_Yu Yu Hakusho_ is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi, Shonen Jump and Funimation, none of whom have given me permission to play in their sandbox, the bastards. I promiuse Kuwabara, Kurama and etc will be returned with minimal damage and probably no lasting psychological damage. Probably. _Silent Hill_ also belongs to a bunch of people who aren't me.

* * *

**The Other Side of Reality**  
Part Two: In which Kuwabara really needs to use the bathroom, and Kurama goes missing

* * *

He dreamed about a room made of night and stars that dripped blood down on his head. The blood gathered and pooled around his feet, rising swiftly till he was wading in the thick, slick liquid. There was no smell, and that's how he knew it was a dream; because he'd been bathed in blood before and the copper stink of it gave him a headache and made his throat clench.

Something tugged at his calves, an undertow in the ocean of blood. The stars still rained down into the room, but now the blood was churning, a whirlpool forming in the center of the room, a perfect circle of red. The blood flowed past him, the force pulling at him enough to drag him forward into the center of the circle, and he fell under the surface.

As soon as he was submerged the blood was gone and he lay on his back on the floor. Above him the stars had gone dark, and the sky was black and empty. Everything was black and empty, but when he looked down at himself, he could still see.

He stood, and he was dry and clean, no blood anywhere. He wondered if the blood had been pulled out of his veins as well, if he would still be alive when he left the night.

Around him, a perfect circle of red began to glow in the night, and another within it. Symbols glowed and pulsed around him like a heartbeat. He stood in the center of it and each pulse of the light made his breath catch in his chest. Somehow he understood that he wasn't part of this circle, that the symbols it contained were pushing him away.

He raised his hands before his eyes, and the same pattern was carved into the palm of each hand. Wonderingly he turned them over, and there was a different circle, different symbols, carved into the skin.

The black beneath his feet vanished and he fell.

* * *

Kuwabara woke and eyed the ceiling warily, but it was the same off-white it had always been, with no sign of blood-spewing stars in sight. He checked his hands for strange occult patters, just in case. He hadn't had any weird dreams come true on him for a while, but stranger things happened. There was nothing out of the ordinary though, so he just rubbed a hand across his eyes and stretched. 

The absolute best thing about being self-employed was the ability to sleep in. It was a liberty that Kuwabara had taken to abusing over the last few months, to the point where Shizuru had threatened to start sending clients up to his bedroom if he couldn't be out of bed by the time the office opened. He'd have been a lot more intimidated if they ever had any clients.

Still, some things could only be ignored for so long and Kuwabara reluctantly rolled out of bed, nearly kicking Eikichi, curled up by his feet. He scratched his chest and rolled his shoulder and staggered down the hall toward the bathroom. No sounds came from downstairs, but it was the weekend, and Shizuru wouldn't be by to open the office until after lunch. Which was good, because it meant he wouldn't have to worry about getting dressed before he got his coffee.

But first. He yawned, cracking his jaw as he knocked on the closed bathroom door. "Kurama? Man, tell me you're not turning the room into a sauna again." He would have added something about taking more time in the bathroom than any three girls Kuwabara knew, but his self-preservation kicked in at the last minute.

He yawned and stretched, locking his fingers together and reaching above his head. "Kurama," he managed through the yawn.

His spine crawled and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He craned his neck to glance down the hall, thinking maybe Shizuru had snuck up on him. She could _do_ that, her own psychic abilities effectively canceling out his when she wanted them to. When he'd been a kid she'd done that all the time. He was fairly certain she was to blame for at least half his paranoia.

But the hallway behind him was empty, and he shrugged it off.

_Coffee_, he decided. _Coffee, coffee_. Maybe by the time he'd set a pot to brewing, Kurama would be done curling his hair and doing his nails.

The downstairs was dim and shadowy. Kuwabara flipped on the kitchen lights as he grabbed the coffee tin out of the cupboards. A glance out the window over the sink showed a dark, overcast sky and the signs of rain from the night before.

The coffee machine was the only new thing in the room. Other kitchen appliances had come with the house, and varied in age from decrepit to merely old, but the coffee maker was brand new and bright white. After his apartment burned and the insurance fell through, Kuwabara had shelled out of pocket to make sure he could still get his caffeine fix every morning – even if he got it while sleeping on the floor in Urameshi's living room.

Coffee grounds; filter; water; button pressed. The drizzly sound of percolating coffee filled in some of the empty space in the silent house. Kuwabara leaned on the counter and inhaled deeply, trying to suck the caffeine straight into his lungs. It distracted him from how much he needed to use the bathroom, and the lingering feeling that something was sneaking up on him.

Breakfast, he decided. He wasn't usually up early enough to eat breakfast, so it'd be a nice change. He pushed off the counter and crossed the kitchen, planning to check the fridge and see if they actually had anything that could be considered food. They must have bread at least. Toast maybe. Or rice. They had to have _rice_, didn't they?

He paused with his hand an inch from the refrigerator handle, feeling something huge and dark and hollow pressing down on him.

_Okay_, he thought. _The fridge isn't _that_ bare._

He backed away a step or two and the sensation faded. A step forward and it came back, something huge and… yawning.

His hands hurt. He glanced down, expected to see circles cut into the backs of his hands, but all he saw were two angry red circles of raised flesh, like a burn. He clenched his fists and they were gone.

Tentatively, he lowered his shields, reaching out. He prodded at the emptiness, and it was like, like being numb and deaf and blind. He was used to his psychic abilities bringing him too much input, more details than he could handle, but this nothingness was just as hard to cope with. It was a dark place of vacuum in the middle of what was otherwise a perfectly ordinary world.

He stepped forward again until he was practically pressed against the fridge, until he could feel the void above him. He tipped his head back, staring at the ceiling. The paint was browned and peeling, the wood beneath it looked soft and rotten. Something dripped from it and struck his shoulder. He looked down and saw blood.

Kuwabara pictured the upstairs and figured he was standing directly beneath the bathtub.

He forgot the coffee and took the stairs two and three at a time. The bathroom door was locked, and the doorknob didn't give under his grip. "Kurama?" he called, just in case his senses were messing with him, just in case he was about to bust in on Kurama jerking off in the shower or plucking his eyebrows.

No answer. He lowered his shoulder and hit the door hard enough to take it off the hinges. Except that suddenly the door seemed to be made of concrete, and Kuwabara backed away with an aching shoulder and a slightly dizzy feeling.

The door wasn't even made of real wood. It should have splintered easily. He narrowed his eyes and rested one hand flat against the door, probing at it tentatively with his sixth sense.

Dark. Black. Empty. He saw blood pooling behind his eyelids and shook his head to chase the image away. His palms itched, and when he backed away, the door was smeared with his blood, even though the skin of his palm was unblemished.

"Okay," he said, wincing at the slight nausea that bubbled in his stomach. "No touching the door. Right."

Possibly it was time to call in reinforcements.

* * *

Yuusuke was on the Tarzan level of Kingdom Hearts, getting his ass kicked by evil monkeys for about the twentieth time, when Genkai appeared in the door way and threw the phone at his head. He ducked on reflex and caught the phone in his left hand, tucked it under his ear and quickly had Sora keyblade a heartless into non-existence. "What?" 

"We have a problem." Kuwabara sounded terse and a little worried.

"Tell me about it," Yuusuke said in disgust. "I'm getting my ass kicked by freaking monkeys. I hate this game."

Kuwabara grunted into his ear. "We have bigger problems than your inability to win at a children's video game, Urameshi."

"It is _not_ a kid's game," Yuusuke said hotly. "And just because this one level is a little tough doesn't mean I never win!"

"_Urameshi_," Kuwabara said. "Concentrate. I know that's asking a lot of you-"

"Hey!"

"-but we have a _problem_."

Yuusuke hit pause and grabbed the phone to hold it more securely. "What's going on?"

"Kurama's trapped in the bathroom."

Yuusuke blinked and pulled the phone away to stare at it, as if it could explain what the hell Kuwabara was talking about. "Could you repeat that, please?"

His friend was starting to sound tense. "You heard me the first time, Urameshi."

"This already sounds like something I don't want to be involved with." Yuusuke eyed the television screen regretfully and set the controller down.

"It gets better. I'm pretty sure the bathroom isn't actually there anymore."

"This is your bathroom, right?" Yuusuke grabbed his jean jacket and slid his arms into the sleeves, somehow managing not to drop the phone. "The one in your house? With the tacky shower curtains?"

"My sister bought those shower curtains. And yes, that bathroom. It seems to be gone. Or at least, inaccessible."

Yuusuke paused at the front door as he shoved his feet into his sneakers – a pair so ratty Genkai had told him to leave them out on the porch instead of by the front door. "Okay, maybe this is a dumb question-"

Kuwabara snorted.

"-but did you stop to think Kurama just, you know, locked the door? Maybe he's taking a piss and you have some kind of weird separation anxiety that I don't need to know about?"

"Urameshi, the downstairs ceiling is _rotting_. The ceiling directly beneath the bathroom. There's blood running down the walls in the kitchen. Kurama went in there and never came out. _Get your ass over here._"

"You know," Yuusuke said tightly, "I never liked that creepy house."

Kuwabara laughed shortly, "You like it enough when you break in and eat all my food." Then he hung up.

Yuusuke tossed the phone over his shoulder to Genkai, who caught it without acknowledging him, and ran out the door.

* * *

tbc 

Comments and critiques are always welcome!


	3. The Cavalry Arrives

**Disclaimer: **_Yu Yu Hakusho_ is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi, Shonen Jump and Funimation, none of whom have given me permission to play in their sandbox, the bastards. I promiuse Kuwabara, Kurama and etc will be returned with minimal damage and probably no lasting psychological damage. Probably. _Silent Hill_ also belongs to a bunch of people who aren't me.

**Notes:** Well, I missed Halloween by a few days, but hopefully you guys will enjoy this anyway.

Much thanks to my beta-readers and all the people who've reviewed this story. I always appreciate feedback and critiques.

* * *

The Other Side of Reality  
Part Three: In which Kurama goes exploring and Kuwabara contemplates interior design.

* * *

Kurama glanced over his shoulder at the cupboard beneath the sink. The doors were still mostly closed, but thick, fleshy tentacles were slithering around the door and feeling the sink, the floor, the little throw rug beside the tub. They slid farther into the room, apparently long enough that whatever creature they belonged to didn't have to venture out of the cupboard to investigate.

He had looked inside that cupboard just a moment ago, and aside from some blood and gore, it had been empty.

One of the tentacles curled around one half of the corpse of the creature Kurama had killed and dragged it into the cupboard so quickly Kurama took a step back. Sounds came from behind those mostly closed doors – the sound a dog makes when it's gnawing on a bone. Whatever was living under his sink was hungry and ate flesh. That was good to know. A second tentacle grabbed the remaining half of the corpse and it too vanished beneath the sink.

Another clatter of falling plaster, drew his attention back to the wall. The summoning circle was completely hollow now, the blank space within the inner circle had crumbled away, leaving a dark and empty space. Kurama could see only a few feet inside, but what he saw was not the linen closet, but instead a rough and narrow tunnel. The walls were jagged and uneven, as if they'd been dug by hand. An unsettling thought.

Now that it had opened the tunnel, the steady drip of blood slowed. The symbols remained unscathed.

Kurama briefly evaluated his options. He could remain here, hope that whatever was under the sink was as easy to deal with as its predecessor had been, and continue trying to break down the door. Odds were good that eventually the others would figure out something was wrong and stage a rescue attempt, although at present, Kurama seriously doubted even Yuusuke was strong enough to open that door.

Or he could exit through the tunnel.

Beneanth the sink, the chewing sounds stopped, and the growling started again. The tentacles, which had been mostly at rest while the creature fed, resumed their exploration.

Kurama stepped into the tub, narrowly avoiding one lashing tentacle. There was still a slick layer of blood coating the bottom of the tub, making his bare toes curl slightly before he sternly reminded himself he had certainly dealt with nastier things. He examined the circle one more time, committing the symbols to memory, tracing a finger along the outer edge of the portal, then hefted himself up and inside.

It was narrow enough that he had to crawl, and his shoulders scraped against the walls if he wasn't careful. But the dirt was hard packed and rock solid – not freshly dug. It was as if the tunnel had been there for many years, waiting for someone to cross through the summoning circle.

Of all the things he hadn't wanted to find in his bathroom…

It was dark enough not that he couldn't see ahead of him; the light from the bathroom had reached only a few feet inside, then abruptly vanished. So when the tunnel dropped out from under him, he didn't realize it in time to stop himself from falling.

* * *

Kuwabara pulled the door open a half second before Yuusuke knocked – some little psychic parlor trick his sister and Genkai both tended to pull all the time, and one which annoyed the hell out of Yuusuke. He had his mouth open to say something to that effect, when he noticed that the whole damn house, Kuwabara included, reeked of blood. It rocked him back on his heels and made the demon part stir restlessly in the back of his mind. He shook his head to clear it and focused on Kuwabara.

The human was barefoot and wearing nothing more than a pair of jeans. There was a smear of blood on his shoulder and Yuusuke eyed him quickly checking for injuries. Kuwabara hadn't mentioned any, but hey, you could never be sure. "So," he said by way of opening gambit, "Kurama's hogging the bathroom?"

Kuwabara rolled his eyes, but grinned. "Yeah, you know how he gets with the bubblebath." He stepped away from the door, letting Yuusuke past. He glared out and up. "Hiei."

"Huh?" Yuusuke frowned over his shoulder as he felt the flicker of the fire demon's ki from out of nowhere. Feeling Hiei was like someone standing at his back with a candle, a warmth between his shoulder blades. He hadn't noticed it until now – he hadn't been looking for it – but evidently Kuwabara had.

Hiei dropped out of the sky and darted into the house so quickly that a normal human would have seen nothing more than a black flicker, if that much. He paused just inside the doorway, ignoring Kuwabara as he nodded briefly to Yuusuke. Kuwabara closed the door and glared at his back.

"This place reeks," Yuusuke said flatly.

Kuwabara frowned. "What?"

Hiei and Yuusuke both stared at him. "Blood," the fire demon said, finally, his tone carefully reserved in a way Yuusuke didn't like.

"It stinks, Kuwabara," Yuusuke said. "The whole place. It's like a slaughterhouse. You didn't notice?"

Kuwabara jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Come take a look at this."

The kitchen was pretty much the same as the last time Yuusuke had seen it, except for the blood dripping down the walls. He followed Kuwabara's finger and looked up. There was a brown patch on the ceiling, and blood was coming out of it, flowing across the ceiling to the walls, and then dripping down in what had to violate some law of physics, even if Yuusuke couldn't tell you which.

"It's spreading," Kuwabara said flatly. "I measured it as well as I could while I was waiting for you to get here and as near as I can tell, the rot is spreading only as far as the walls of the upstairs bathroom."

"The blood?" Yuusuke asked, blinking and stepping back, just in case all that blood decided to stop violating the laws of physics.

"It's coagulating," Hiei said.

Kuwabara nodded once. "Once it hits the walls it starts getting thick, and by the time it hits the floor it's pretty much… congealed."

Yuusuke risked a glance at the floor by the refrigerator, where a particularly thick stream of blood was flowing into the floor. All along the baseboards was dried and drying puddles of blood. The fresher blood pooled on top of the dried, forming little mounds. "You're gonna need to hire a cleaning service when this is over."

Kuwabara grimaced at him. "Thanks for volunteering."

"Dude," Yuusuke said seriously, "there are limits even to our friendship."

"The bathroom," Hiei said, preventing Kuwabara from attempting to smack Yuusuke upside the head. "Show me."

"I thought you said it was gone," Yuusuke said.

The human shrugged. "I can't sense inside it. All I feel is a void."

"As if the room were empty?" Hiei asked.

"No." Kuwabara stopped at the top of the stairs and let them both examine the bathroom door. "An empty room still has feeling. A sense of space, lingering memories. This is as if nothing exists on the other side of that door."

Yuusuke gave the door an experimental shake, then kicked it just to see what would happen. It didn't even shake on its hinges. "Hiei, try cutting it open."

Kuwabara was already shaking his head as Hiei drew one of his katana and slashed at the door. No mark, no cut. Hiei didn't look surprised, but he did look annoyed. Yuusuke figured it was less that he failed and more that Kuwabara'd been right about him failing.

"It gets better," Kuwabara said, then he reached past Yuusuke and flattened his hand against the wood.

* * *

Kurama woke up in the kitchen.

He was lying on his back beside the refrigerator, his head tilted to the side and facing the door. For a moment everything was blurry and indistinct, but as he pulled himself up from unconsciousness the room snapped into focus.

It was… changed. The floor was covered in dirt and grime, the walls were streaked with filth where there were no holes and the wallpaper wasn't ripped away, the appliances were rust covered and decrepit. The windows were covered with handprints and dark brown stains, blocking most of the light and leaving the room feeling even darker and dingier than it was.

Kurama carefully sat up, grimacing at the feel of mold and mud beneath his fingers and the dampness soaking through his pajamas. He stood carefully, but he could already tell he was uninjured from the fall. His loss of consciousness had to be because of the tunnel, not from a head injury.

The tunnel. He scanned the kitchen quickly, eyes catching additional details – the phone cord dangling from the jack in the wall, as it if had been pulled away, the open drawers, the open microwave, crusted with something dark and greasy – and found what he was looking for. Tipping his head back he examined the ceiling, and the blood red summoning circle painted onto the wood. Like the one in the bathroom, this one was carved out in the center, making a tunnel that disappeared into the ceiling.

"I'm not going back that way," he murmured.

He examined the room carefully, searching the countertops and drawers, but found little of use. He flipped a long serrated cooking knife over his knuckles for a moment, then slipped a seed form his hair, a thin, supple vine sprouting in his hand. He pulled his hair back into a rough ponytail and wound the vine around it, the vine obeying his touch and holding itself tight. A second vine wound around his forearm and held the knife in place.

He had a suspicion that anything he encountered here would not be friendly.

The hallway and living room were in similar states, rust and water damage covering nearly every surface, fist-sized holes punched through the walls and occasionally the floor. He tested the stairs carefully, but they seemed steady, and he made his way upstairs.

The upstairs was drastically altered. The floors were gone, replaced with metal grillwork. He paused on the top step, his heightened senses catching the long faded odor of decay, and Kurama eyed the ceiling above him warily. The same metal grill was there, giving him a nearly unobstructed view of an attic that the house had not had that morning. He paused, listening for footsteps or breathing, but heard nothing.

The doors were also different. The bathroom door had been replaced at some point with a metal one, including a metal frame, and was welded shut. For good measure someone had nailed long planks across it. Kurama tested it quickly, unsurprised when it proved impossible to open.

The pantry door opened easily, showing a few towels and sheets, all stained with the same mold and grime that decorated the rest of the house. He ventured further down the hall, the grill a strange, uncomfortable feeling beneath his bare feet. Kuwabara's room was next, and though the door did not seem strange, and the knob turned beneath his hand, the door would not open.

His own door was open when he approached, a thin swatch of daylight spilling through the crack and lighting the grill of the floor.

Kurama pushed the door open the rest of the way.

His room was nearly unchanged, the only signs of dirt and decay being the floor and walls around the door. His furniture and personal belongings seemed unmarked, and the windows were clear. He crossed the room and peered outside, shading his eyes against the brightness. Outside the house, everything appeared perfectly normal. There were students in school uniforms walking past the front, cars driving down the street. The sky was clear and blue. Judging by the sun, Kurama guessed it to be nearly midday, for what that was worth. He tested a window, just to see, but even though it wasn't locked, it wouldn't open. He toyed with the idea of breaking it, but something told him it wouldn't work.

Kurama pulled open the closet door and found that his clothes were as untouched as everything else in the room. Moving quickly, Kurama stripped out of his pajamas and into a pair of jeans and a long sleeved shirt. He slipped his feet into boots without bothering with socks and laced them up quickly while keeping one eye on the door. The knife he kept strapped to his arm, beneath the thin material of the shirt, just in case.

Casting one last glance at the windows, Kurama left the room and headed for the stairs.

Above him, something clanked across the grill.

He glanced up, one arm raised instinctively to defend against an attack, but only empty darkness greeted him. He narrowed his eyes, letting his sight adjust to the dark, searching for a sign of movement in the darkness. Another clank resonated across the grillwork, this time from directly above him. Kurama stepped forward cautiously, still seeing nothing, determined not to let whatever was up there cut him off from the stairs.

Something big struck Kuwabara's door from the inside, rattling the hinges. It struck again, a heavy crash, as if someone were throwing their entire weight against it.

Kurama hesitated, his partner's name coming unbidden to his tongue. "Kuwabara-kun?"

The screech that answered him was not human, and the door shook again.

Kurama cast a last wary glance into the darkness above his head, and crossed the last few feet to the stairs while behind him something shrieked.

He had barely given the living room a cursory glance on his way upstairs, now he checked it over in greater detail. The furniture was soggy and full of holes, the fireplace full of – Kurama paused and glanced again. Where those _bones_? – something, anyway, and the throw rug in front of the couch was ruined. Kurama seriously hoped this was an alternate universe. The cost of redecorating alone would bankrupt them if any of this were real.

On the table by the front door Kurama found Kuwabara's cell phone, and a notepad.

The notepad looked as if it had been sitting there for years instead of just a few minutes. The paper was browned and rotting from water damage, and there were rust-colored stains spattered across, which Kurama rather doubted were actually caused by rust. Faded letters, recognizable as Kuwabara's messy scrawl, could barely be read.

_Gone to Genkai's. Meet me there._

* * *

To be continued.

c&c always appreciated


	4. Kurama Gets in Even More Trouble

**Disclaimer:** Still Yoshihiro Togashi's. Still not mine.

**Author's Notes:** This chapter is dedicated to Sonnet, aka Kahn, who asked me to update for her Christmas present, and for Funara, who posted a review that caused me to go "waaaaait a minute" and rewrite this entire chapter as well as half the plot. I love it when that happens. Much love to Jenjinn for beta-reading. All remaining mistakes area my own. C&C always accepted.

* * *

_**The Other Side of Reality**_

_**Part Four: In which Yuusuke has a "stupid, stupid, bad!" plan and Kurama is introduced to the enemy**_

"It gets better," Kuwabara said, then he reached past Yuusuke and flattened his hand against the wood. He felt the nausea coil through his stomach and this time, since he was expecting it, he could actually feel the skin on his palm splitting apart. It didn't hurt, although it did make the skin on the back of his neck crawl, and there was a lingering ache when he pulled his hand away to display the strange symbols to his teammates.

Hiei's eyes narrowed. "That's a gateway spell."

Yuusuke stared at Kuwabara's hand for a minute. "Huh. That's something new."

"Huh," Kuwabara echoed sourly. The skin was already healing, the oddly intricate symbols that had appeared as if carved into the palm of his hand fading into thin white lines. In a few minutes more the skin would be pink and clean, and marked only by the crisscrossing lines of his palm. The blood remained as the wounds healed, and Kuwabara wiped his hand on his jeans before it could dry.

Yuusuke poked tentatively at the door with one finger. "I don't sense any youki," he said doubtfully, splaying his hand to rest flat against the door. He pulled his hand away unmarked and wiggled his fingers. "I guess I'm not special enough."

There were dozens of things Kuwabara could have said to answer that. Sadly, Hiei beat him to it, and wasn't even a bastard about it. For once.

"The reaction is probably connected to your psychic abilities." The fire demon studied the door with a typically inscrutable expression. "It's possible that you had an empathic experience."

Yuusuke nodded. "I don't know what that means."

"He thinks I'm tapping into Kurama on the other side."

Hiei didn't exactly nod in agreement, but he didn't get the 'you're too stupid to be allowed to live' look, either.

"Okay, so somewhere in your bathroom – which isn't there anymore – someone is slicing Kurama's hands up into pretty decorative patterns?"

"It was a gateway spell," Hiei repeated.

"So your bathroom is in the _makai_?" Yuusuke said skeptically.

Kuwabara gave Urameshi and the door equally baleful looks.

"No." Hiei had the pained expression he always adopted when forced to explain things. It clearly said he was wondering why he hadn't killed them all and returned to the makai years ago. Then he paused. "Probably not."

"It's gonna take weeks to get the smell out," Kuwabara sighed. "Forget bleach. I'll have to find out what Genkai uses to get all the demon blood out of the temple floors."

"_Probably not_? We're sitting here scratching our asses while Kurama is who-knows-where-"

"Possibly the Makai," Hiei interjected, "or another dimension."

"What is this?" Kuwabara asked rhetorically, "_Star Trek_?"

"Or another planet entirely," Hiei added. "It's not inconceivable, if the spellcaster were sufficiently powerful."

Kuwabara gaped at him for a minute. "You're just being a jerk now, aren't you? You're totally making this crap up just to freak me – _what are you doing?_"

Urameshi casually pointed an index finger at the bathroom door. "We want the door open, right?"

"Door open, yes! House and neighborhood demolished, no. Put that thing away!"

"You're overreacting."

"You're trying to blow up my house!"

"Just the door!"

Kuwabara threw his hands up in disgust. "That's bad enough! This is your plan? Blowing up bits and pieces of my house is your plan?"

"Hey, do you want Kurama back or not?"

"Yes! And that's why I don't want you shooting spirit balls the size of your huge yet hollow _head_ into the room he's trapped in!"

Urameshi smirked. "I can make the spirit gun non-fatal, remember?"

"Can you guarantee it won't piss off what's done this and provoke it into destroying the room and everything in it?"

"Oh." Urameshi paused. "That's probably a bad idea."

Kuwabara glared. "You don't say."

"Opening the door is probably ill-advised," Hiei spoke up.

Kuwabara glanced over his shoulder, irritated to find himself in agreement. "Why?"

"Yeah," Urameshi echoed. "Why?"

Kuwabara decided he really didn't want to be in agreement with either one of them.

"The door may be keeping us out," Hiei said, "but also means that whatever is inside that room expects us to come in that way."

"That room doesn't exist anymore," Urameshi said.

Hiei shrugged, casting Kuwabara a blatantly doubtful look. "That's not the most accurate statement."

Kuwabara flipped him off.

Urameshi crossed his arms and began to look testy. "So what the fuck _is_ the most accurate statement?"

"I don't know. But attempting to interfere with the situation before we understand it is-"

"What we always do?"

"Inordinately _stupid_."

Kuwabara grinned at Urameshi. "Yeah. What we always do."

* * *

The thing in Kuwabara's room roared again, an angry, challenging bellow, followed by the sound of it throwing itself against the door. Kurama glanced upwards, crinkling the note in his hand as he curled his fingers into fists.

He was working under the assumption that he had been pulled into a pocket dimension, a bubble in space and time created by an outside force. He supposed it had to be intentional, though he didn't know anyone they'd pissed off lately who could be so powerful.

Summoning spells, on the other hand, were cheap and easy. Humans without an ounce of spiritual or magical talent cast them all the time, trying to enlist demonic aid in their plans for glory and vengeance. Summoning spells also went wrong very easily.

Spectacularly wrong.

_Gone to Genkai's. Meet me there._

It had been Saturday morning when he stepped into the bathroom, but a glance outside the window had shown him students in uniform on their way to class, and the typical mid-afternoon rush hour of cars and bicycles. It had to be at least Monday morning, then.

For the amount of damage he was witnessing to be done, however, a far greater amount of time had to have passed. The house looked as if it had been in a state of massive disrepair for years.

He slid Kuwabara's cell phone into his pocket and folded the wrinkled note in half, tucking it into the front pocket of his jeans.

There was insufficient evidence to support either theory. For now all he could do was remain alert and wary, and try not to take any part of his situation at face value.

_Gone to Genkai's… _

No matter how much he wanted to.

The floor sank slightly beneath his feet, rotting floorboards barely supporting him as he walked to the front door. The front hallway was dim, and moldy, the air damp. The long, narrow windows set on either side of the front door were cracked, one nothing more than a collection of spiderwebs that made it impossible to see through. Kurama saw the way the glass was bulging slightly outwards, and figured the glass must have been struck from the inside.

Several pairs of shoes were kicked into a corner; Kurama recognized Kuwabara's boots and sneakers, and a pair of what Kurama graciously supposed could be called tennis shoes if one were willing to be lenient. A pair of Kurama's boots was set neatly alongside the wall, underneath the coat rack.

He turned the doorknob and was unsurprised when it turned, but would not open.

The ceiling shook as whatever was upstairs threw itself against the door again and Kurama tipped his head back thoughtfully. No regular door would withstand that much violence. Much like the bathroom door.

Interesting.

Well then. Perhaps there was something he was overlooking.

He retraced his steps upstairs, keeping one eye on the ceiling grill. He rubbed the toe of one boot thoughtfully over the grill beneath his feet as well, focusing his sight down into the darkness below him. He could make out metal going down a long, long way and not a glimpse of the kitchen.

Well, that made as much sense as the non-existent attic, he supposed.

He stopped outside Kuwabara's room, listening to the sound of something large breathing just a few inches away. He sensed no youki, and no reiki either for that matter. This close he should have been able to _smell_ whatever was on the other side of the door, but the only thing his senses picked up was a heavy rasping.

He was _missing_ something.

The thing behind the door whined piteously and threw itself at the door again. Kurama slid his fingers over the doorknob, turning it slowly, but there was no click of a latch disengaging, and when he pushed, the door did not give.

He glanced across the hall at the barricaded bathroom, and down toward his own room.

Bright blue paint was splashed across his door, in short, sloppy hiragana.

_Denwa dero. _'Pick up the phone.'

In his pocket, Kuwabara's cell phone began to vibrate.

* * *

"You know," Yuusuke said thoughtfully, "I don't think this is a good idea."

Kuwabara beside him, head tipped back to survey the blood currently pouring out of his ceiling. "It was your idea."

Yuusuke rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, but I didn't think you'd actually go along with it. I mean, look how you reacted when I tried to knock down the door."

Hiei grunted irritably in a way that meant they should stop talking. Perched upside down on the ceiling, just inches away from the source of the gravity-defying blood, he didn't spare them the attention it would require to glare them into submission.

Yuusuke leaned over and lowered his voice. "Also, did you know he could do that?"

"Sure," Kuwabara said. "Can't all bugs?" He caught Yuusuke's eye and they both snickered.

A spatter of half-congealed blood smacked across Kuwabara's chest and Yuusuke's shoulder, provoking a disgusted shout. Yuusuke tugged at his shirt wondering if supernatural blood stained worse than the regular kind, while Kuwabara snarled incoherently at Hiei and shuddered theatrically before grabbing a hand towel and scrubbing himself off.

Yuusuke made a face. "That's gross, Hiei. I mean, what if this stuff was acidic or something. Or poisonous?" They'd fought an ice wyrm once whose blood had frozen whatever it touched. That had sucked. "We could be poisoned now."

"A pity." The fire demon didn't sound particularly upset about it. "I need a lever."

A lever? Yuusuke raised an eyebrow at Hiei, who was reaching into the source of the blood with one hand, feeling around. "That's blood, Hiei!"

"I hadn't noticed." Hiei pulled his hand free and caught the knife Kuwabara tossed him, eyeing it suspiciously. It must have passed his test because a second later Hiei jammed it into the ceiling and pried a board loose.

"So knocking the door down would piss off the supernatural badness, but ripping up the ceiling won't?" Yuusuke asked no one in particular.

"Yes," Kuwabara said. "Because no one is shooting huge balls of spiritual energy at it this time."

A second board joined the first one on the floor, and Kuwabara squatted next to them to poke around. "Wood's rotted through," he said. "We probably could've broken in with our bare hands."

"Some of us can break through _normal_ wood with our bare hands," Yuusuke preened slightly, and flexed a bicep while his friend scowled. Kuwabara really was easy to aggravate sometimes. He watched as Hiei pried a third board loose and casually enough that it was probably intentional, dropped it on Kuwabara's head. "How's it look, Hiei?"

The demon grunted. "We're not getting in this way." He swept at the trickle of blood, smearing it across the rusted metal that had been revealed beneath the boards.

"That's not supposed to be there, right?" Yuusuke didn't know much about contruction, but he'd been thrown through enough walls to know that most houses didn't have metal sheeting. "If it's rusted, maybe we could break through?"

Hiei dropped from the ceiling, executing a perfect spin in midair and landing on his feet. "I doubt the condition matters. We should have been able to break through the door easily, yet it resisted our best efforts."

"This probably won't be any different," Kuwabara finished. "Great."

"Told you it was a bad plan," Yuusuke said. He smirked as both his teammates glared at him with identical expressions of annoyance. They did that a lot, actually. One day he'd tell them and watch their heads explode. "So, I'm all out of ideas."

"Pity," Hiei said. "Your last one was so brilliant."

"Hey," he objected mildly, but the ringing of the phone cut him off.

"Get it," Kuwabara said. "It's Kurama." He snapped his mouth shut with an audible crack of teeth and blinked at his own words.

* * *

"_Kurama? Is that you?_" Yuusuke's voice sounded tinny and distant, like a long distance call made on a cell phone, which it almost certainly was.

"Yuusuke," Kurama said with deep relief. "I've been worried. Is Kuwabara-kun with you?"

"_Yeesssss,_" Yuusuke said slowly, the word becoming a long, drawn-out hiss. "_He's been here all along._"

Kurama paused. "Yuusuke?"

The voice on the other end of the line deepened, became slick and dark and suggestive. "_I'm going to eat your bones, Kurama._"

It didn't sound like Yuusuke at all. Even when he was trying to, Yuusuke couldn't manage anything much worse than 'vaguely threatening'. "Who are you?"

"_I am a harbinger._"

Definitely not Yuusuke. He wouldn't even know what that word meant. "Did you bring me here?"

"_I had some help._" A low, deep chuckle rolled against Kurama's ear. "_However unwilling._"

His fingers curled around the mouthpiece of the phone. "If you've hurt anyone…"

"_There's nothing you can do to me. I'll see you soon, Kurama._"

Something moved in the corner of Kurama's vision and he turned.

A thick, pink rope dangled from the ceiling, writhing slightly, curling in at the tip. Kurama drew back slightly, watching as thin strands of clear fluid dripped down its length and fell through the grill of the floor.

* * *

Yuusuke snagged the phone off the wall, nearly pulling the cord loose in his hurry. "Kurama?" said. "Is that you?"

Kurama sounded stressed – in that Kurama way, which didn't sound stressed at _all_, but Yuusuke had learned how to recognize the vague clues. "_Yuusuke. I've been worried. Is Kuwabara-kun with you?_"

Yuusuke peered at Kuwabara, who was watching the conversation with a narrow gaze. "Yeah," and he didn't add 'being all creepy' but he sure thought it – "he's right here. Listen, where are you?"

The response sounded uncertain. "_Yuusuke?_"

"Yeah?"

"_Who are you?_"

"I'm… me?" Yuusuke frowned. "Kurama, where are you?"

"_Did you bring me here_?"

Yuusuke gripped the mouthpiece of the phone and exchanged a look with his two teammates. "I don't think he's talking to me anymore."

"_If you've hurt anyone-_"

Okay, now Kurama sounded pissed. Yuusuke wished he could hear the other end of the conversation. Kurama didn't piss off easily, though threatening other people was definitely the fastest way to do it. "Kurama?" he tried again. "Kurama, can you hear me?"

Silence. It was thick and heavy through the phone, weighing on his shoulders as he strained for any little sound, as Kuwabara and Hiei watched him. "Answer me, Kurama."

Something like a t-rex roared, and the line went dead.

"Yeah," Yuusuke said. "I think he's in trouble."

tbc

* * *

c&c always accepted! 


	5. It's Called 'Foreshadowing'

**Warnings:** Violence and scenes of extreme grossness. Blood abounding. Dismemberment. Demons (if this bothers you, you're probably in the wrong fandom...) Some coarse language.

**Disclaimer: **Yoshihiro Togashi would never, in a million years, be this mean to Kurama.

Much love to Kahn, for beta-reading. Any remaining mistakes are my own. Comments, feedback and critiques are always accepted.

Virtual cookies to anyone who has managed to guess what's going on.

* * *

**_The Other Side of Reality  
_**_**Part Five: In Which Kurama has an Unpleasant Surprise and Kuwabara Still Doesn't Get to Go to the Bathroom**_

Something moved in the corner of Kurama's vision and he turned.

A thick, pink rope dangled from the ceiling, writhing slightly, curling in at the tip. Kurama drew back slightly, watching as thin strands of clear fluid dripped down its length and fell through the grill of the floor. It was moist and… fleshy. A bellowing roar echoed from the rafters and the rope twitched and writhed.

Kurama glanced up.

Yuusuke crouched on all fours above him, face pressed against the metal grill so hard that his skin bulged slightly. His mouth gaped open around the huge, apparently prehensile, tongue, and saliva dripped from his lips like a rabid dog.

"Kuramaaaaaa," Yuusuke screeched, the tongue lashing slightly as Yuusuke swung his body from side to side, his face pressing even further into the grill.

"Yuusuke?" The name fell off his lips almost without conscious thought as Kurama stared up at the abomination, the _caricature_, of one of his closest friends. He risked a step forward, his other senses alert for any sign that this was a distraction and an enemy was approaching.

The creature made a sound like a child giggling with its mouth full of water. "Yuuuuuuuuuusuke tasted good."

Yuusuke had once described anger as something that seethed and bubbled, a sentiment Kuwabara had echoed, likening the emotion to a pot boiling over. For Kurama anger was cold, smooth and silent. Ice slid down the inside of his skin and coated his stomach. Adrenaline curled down his spine, tendrils of freezing cold that left his skin tight and sent his senses into a dizzying state of hyper-awareness. Anger didn't cloud Kurama's mind, it cleared it, forced out every thought but that of how to deal with the threat before him.

It was not easy to make Kurama angry, and it did not happen often.

No one had ever done it twice.

The creature moved in the same instant he did, the tongue lashing out even as Kurama used his reiki to slide the knife, still wrapped in vines around his forearm, into his palm.

The tongue struck at his face and Kurama parried, slicing the knife into the corded flesh and drawing blood.

_Yes_, Kurama thought in the part of his mind that was always alert, always analyzing, the part that spoke loudest in combat, _definitely prehensile_.

The creature howled, the bottom chunk of its tongue dangling by a thread of flesh. Purple-red blood covered the edge of the knife and dripped from the wound. The creature snarled, but Kurama flung his arm out, the vines leaping from his hand to wrap around the tongue in a strangling vise, the other ends remaining wrapped tightly around his arm and up around his shoulder. He commanded the vines to pull back, tightening until the tongue was pulled taut and the creature was whinging above him.

"You can talk," Kurama said coldly, placing the knife against the tongue and cutting a shallow groove in the wet muscle. "So tell me where I am."

"Priiiiiiison." The creature sounded almost petulant, and the tone was eerily similar to Yuusuke's when he was being forced to behave.

Kurama paused, the tip of the knife just barely breaking the skin deep enough to draw blood. "A prison? Is this some kind of Reikai punishment?" He almost dismissed the thought out of hand. He didn't believe Koenma would throw him into Hell at this point in their association, not without a warning at least. Enma would without hesitation, but the king of the afterlife wasn't known for being subtle. This was not his style.

"Not Reeeeikai," the creature moaned. "Kurama's prison."

Vague, but it gave Kurama something to work with. "If this is a prison, someone had to build it. Who made this place?" That part of his mind was still thinking of summoning circles and rotting floors and the passage of time, but the rest was remembering Itsuki the Gatekeeper and hoping.

The creature hissed suddenly and the tongue jerked, dragging Kurama forward slightly, the vines going slack before it lashed out again, striking across Kurama's chest with enough force to make him stagger. "Heeeee made it," Yuusuke's voice said, and Yuusuke's eyes leered down at him from above Yuusuke's smirking mouth. The tongue slithered across Kurama's neck and he reacted immediately, slicing the knife down and across with enough force to sever the last foot of muscle.

The dead flesh slid down the front of Kurama's chest, blood splattered across his throat and chest. Above him, the creature screamed and flung itself away from the bars, leaping into the darkness above.

Kurama carefully wiped the knife off on his jeans while the vines obeyed his mental command and slithered back up his arm, vanishing beneath his sleeve, taking the knife and binding it once again to his forearm.

Then he closed his eyes and leaned back, the smooth wood of Kuwabara's door bracing him upright.

The click of a lock disengaging echoed uncomfortably in the narrow hallway, bouncing off the walls and down through the endless darkness beneath the grillwork floors.

Kurama felt the door give way behind him and he turned to stare at the narrow crack of light revealed through the inch-wide gap between the door and the frame. The daylight was dirty and dull, as if filtered through smeared windows and a roomful of dust, but it was still a beacon compared to the grotesqueness that surrounded him on all other sides.

Kurama did not know why the door had opened at just that moment, when minutes earlier it had been shut fast, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. Odds were, it wasn't anything good.

He lifted his hand and touched his fingers to the door, intending to push it open the rest of the way, discover what horrors lurked in Kuwabara's room - _couldn't be worse than the attic_, he thought, even though he was pretty sure it could - when something large and solid moved behind the door and blocked out the light.

He paused, fingers touching the door, and stared into the single brown eye glaring at him from the other side. The face was obscured by hair, greasy and unwashed, but an unmistakable fire-orange, and the voice, though guttural in a way that was almost alien, was familiar.

Kurama held the gaze as Kuwabara growled, "Go to Genkai's," and the door slammed shut with enough force to rattle the frame.

* * *

"Star-six-nine!" 

Yuusuke stopped staring at the phone like it was possessed long enough to stare at Kuwabara like he was insane. "What?"

"Star-six-nine!" Kuwabara lunged for the phone. "How technologically incompetent _are_ you?"

"It's not like we have cutting-edge phone service in the Makai," Yuusuke snapped. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's like redial," Kuwabara said, grabbing the receiver and punching in three digits. "In reverse."

Yuusuke caught on even as a tinny, vibrating sound filled the room. It stopped for a second, then started again.

Kuwabara pulled the phone away from his ear slowly.

"Hiei," Yuusuke asked. "Are you staring at Kuwabara's ass for the same reason I'm staring at Kuwabara's ass?"

They glared at him in unison again – and he really had to tell them they did that, one of these days. Kuwabara reached into his back pocket with his free hand and pulled out his cell phone.

"So, I'm kind of doubting Kurama's in your pants." Yuusuke paused. "At the moment, anyway. So what's going on here?"

Kuwabara hung up, and the cell phone stopped vibrating. The cell was one of those little silver flip jobs that made Yuusuke think of bad sci-fi, and it looked ridiculously small in Kuwabara's big hands. "I don't know," Kuwabara said. "I don't get this."

They both glanced at Hiei, who scowled. "I could care less about ridiculous human toys."

Yuusuke smirked. "So you're clueless, too."

Their glaring match was cut off when Kuwabara snarled and shoved the cell phone back in his pocket. "Fuck this," he snapped. "I'll be back."

"Wait, wait – wait!" Yuusuke snapped his fingers at Kuwabara's back. "What are you doing? Do you have a plan? What are we supposed to do? Should we be splitting up?"

The human was already halfway to the front door. "I'm going to take a piss," Kuwabara said. "And I don't think I need backup for this. Just… don't destroy anything for the next two minutes."

Yuusuke hooked his thumbs in his pockets and glanced at the dripping ceiling and the pile of rotten wood in the floor. "He always wants so much of us, doesn't he?"

Hiei grunted.

The front door slammed and the phone started to ring.

Yuusuke eyed it cautiously. "What are the odds I'm gonna wreck something just by answering the phone?"

"Knowing you," Hiei said, "I'd say the odds are fairly catastrophic."

"That's what I thought." Yuusuke snagged the receiver. "House of Horrors. How may I disturb you?"

It was Keiko's voice, sounding as clear and perfect as if she were standing beside him. _"You won't be able to save me."_

"Keiko?" Yuusuke's chest seized, the human heart sitting heavy and cold. "What's wrong?"

"You never could protect me. Not from Suzaku, not from Sensui, not from Yakumo. Why did I believe this would be any different?" 

"Where are you? Keiko? Keiko!"

"It's a trick!" Hiei snapped. "Yuusuke, it's another trick!"

_"Her blood looks pretty on the walls, Yuusuke,"_ Kurama's voice purred into his ear. _"I'm going to paint a picture with it, one you can never wash away."_

Kuwabara stepped through the front door and into his bedroom.

He paused a half-step inside the doorway, taking in the rumpled bed, the pile of clothes in the corner, the bookshelf overflowing with books and videos and a dozen different mementoes of an ill spent youth. It looked like his room, right down to Eikichi, was still curled up at the foot of the bed. Except his bedroom had never been in the front yard before, but apparently today was a day of surprises.

He stepped back, just to see if he could, and he was in the front hallway. He closed the door carefully, listening to it latch, then opened it again.

Eikichi yawned at him.

"Great," Kuwabara said. "So what the hell am I supposed to do no-aaah!" His words cut off in a startled yelp as the door slammed shut behind him with enough force to rattle the bookshelves. He stumbled slightly as the door struck his back and knocked him into the room, but caught himself and spun around instantly, prepared for whatever may be lurking behind him.

Closed now, it was no longer the front door, but definitely that of his bedroom, which made about as much sense as anything else. The back of the door was covered in scratches and gouges, from the very top to the very bottom. Chunks of wood had been broken off near the hinges and the lock. Kuwabara held his hand up to the wood and curled his hand into a fist. Each finger fit perfectly into a gouge mark. Someone had tried to claw their way out of his bedroom.

"This is getting very weird," he breathed. No one had been in the house – not since he woke up that morning, and he would have noticed something like this had it been there at the time. These marks were new, only hours old. They had to be.

Kurama? Perhaps, but unlikely. Kuwabara scanned the room quickly, checking for anything else that seemed out of place, but it was otherwise unchanged from this morning.

Even Eikichi was in exactly the same place he had been when Kuwabara woke up less than three hours ago.

"If you knew what was going on, you'd tell me, right?" he asked the cat.

Eikichi stretched and purred. Kuwabara rubbed his head. "You'd better stay here," he said. "Trust me, downstairs is a mess. You don't want to see what's in your food bowl."

All right, back to the door – if he was trapped in here, Kuwabara promised to commit several different types of mayhem previously unseen by humankind.

He turned the knob and the door opened easily. He pulled it open cautiously, just a couple inches, and paused as he saw a man waiting on the other side. A gaunt, almost skeletal figure stood only a few inches away, swaying slightly on his feet, leaning in toward the door with a hungry look on his face. His hair was greasy and stringy, his eyes cloudy and dead. An expensive grey business suit, frayed at the cuffs and covered in stains, dangled off his emaciated frame.

"Stop fighting me," the man whispered furiously. "You aren't strong enough to cast me out." He leaned further toward the door, but didn't try to force it open the rest of the way, just bared his teeth and hissed, spittle flying from his lips. "Don't you know I already own you?"

Kuwabara bristled. "Like hell you do!" he snapped. He wrenched the door open hard enough that it slammed against the bedroom wall and the doorknob punched a hole in the plaster.

The gaunt man glared at him as his skin and hair began to melt, running down in rivulets, dissolving from the top down, until there was nothing but a puddle, and that seeped into the carpet and vanished.

There was nothing but the upstairs hallway, empty and silent.

Kuwabara nodded to himself and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. Kurama's door was open, but a glance showed no one and nothing inside. The bathroom door was still sealed, still a thin piece of wood standing between him and emptiness. He didn't try to touch it this time, mindful of the effect it had on him. Gateway symbols being mystically carved into your skin had to be a bad thing, even if it looked kind of cool.

He could sense Yuusuke and Hiei below, and he took the stairs down.

"Okay," he said, re-entering the kitchen. "We're kind of trapped, I think the house is haunted, and I still need to use the bathroom." He paused. "And why have you destroyed my phone?"

Yuusuke glared at him.

"All right. Never mind. I'm sure it deserved it." He glared for good measure. "You're so paying for that, though."

"Something is toying with us." Hiei eyed the hole in the wall where the phone used to be. "Using Kurama's voice to provoke us into rash action."

Kuwabara eyed the crushed phone. "Good thing none of us are likely to fall for a trick like that."

Yuusuke ignored them both and latched onto the one important bit of information Kuwabara had. "What do you mean, trapped?"

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Try the front door."

Yuusuke frowned but elbowed past him and down the hall. Hiei arched a single eyebrow. The front door opened. "Hey! It's Eikichi!" Yuusuke's voice drifted down the hall. "Also, since when do you sleep in the front yard?"

"Front door goes upstairs now," Kuwabara explained, and the look on Hiei's face was so totally worth every ounce of aggravation he'd had that day. "I haven't tried a window or anything, but-"

"I'll do it!" Yuusuke called, and a second later they heard the sound of cracking glass and mild swearing.

Kuwabara rubbed a hand over his hair. "I'm going to start running a tab, Urameshi."

His friend wandered back in, Eikichi sprawled in his arms belly-up and unashamedly begging for attention. "Yeah, right. Like you're not going to have to move after this is over anyway. Seriously – would you ever eat anything in this kitchen again?"

He rescued his kitty from the evil, stupid, destructive demon. "What did you break?"

Pouting pointedly at Eikichi, Yuusuke shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. "I tried to break the glass around the door, but it wouldn't shatter. Just kind of bubbled outward. Kind of freaky." He started to slouch against the wall and just barely caught himself in time.

Kuwabara tucked Eikichi against his chest and the cat's fur absently. "What hasn't been freaky about today?"

"Seriously," Yuusuke agreed. "Especially the part where I've had to look at you shirtless for, like, a whole hour and a half."

"Don't feel too intimidated by my manly physique," Kuwabara said, putting as much saccharine-sweet sympathy into his tone as he could without making himself sick. "I know you must be jealous – stuck in the body of a scrawny teenager and all-"

Eikichi twisted in his arms and bit him. Sharp, tiny teeth dug into the skin between his thumb and forefinger and held fast.

Kuwabara swore, and barely managed to stop himself before he flung Eikichi across the room. Blood dripped down his hand and Eikichi was growling, a low, constant vibration he could feel through the ache in his hand. It spread, becoming a pulse, like a heartbeat, and the skin of his palms began to split open in the form of the gateway spell.

It wasn't painless like it had been with the door. He felt every slice and split as if someone had pressed salt into the open wounds, and the blood welling up over the edges of the broken skin _burned_.

"What the hell is he doing?" Yuusuke was shouting, but his voice was tinny and distant, and when Kuwabara looked up, he thought for a moment he saw rusted metal bars separating them. Hands clutched at his and drove the image away. When he blinked, Yuusuke was right there, and trying to pry Eikichi's mouth open without hurting either one of them.

A furious hiss startled them both and Kuwabara turned to see Eikichi – another one, anyway – standing outside the kitchen door. The cat was crouched low to the ground, teeth bared, fur bristling as it stared at the cat in Kuwabara's hands.

"Shit," Yuusuke said succinctly.

There was a sound like ice cracking and the smell of ozone. One of the metal sheets Hiei had uncovered crashed to the floor, gouging a hole in the linoleum. Another followed, forcing Hiei to dart to one side to avoid being struck.

The cat dug its fangs deeper into his skin, and Kuwabara shuddered as his skin split, circles and lines curving over his wrist and up his arm, over his shoulder-

"The ceiling!" Yuusuke gave up on the cat and grabbed Kuwabara's arm, dragging him back as more metal sheets dropped out of the ceiling.

-down his back, up his neck until his entire body felt like it was being ripped apart. As Yuusuke pulled him back, the lines traced down his chest and over his stomach, and the blood welled up and over, staining his jeans and burning his skin.

Yuusuke dropped him in the hallway just outside the kitchen. Hiei grabbed the cat biting his hand and snapped its neck with one sharp twist, too fast for Kuwabara to object, almost too fast for Kuwabara to see, and ripped it off of him.

The last of the metal fell, a rough circle torn into the ceiling. The blood slowed to a trickle and stopped.

In the hallway, it began to rain.

* * *


	6. Things Get Weird

**Warnings: **Violence and scenes of extreme grossness. Blood abounding. Dismemberment. Demons (if this bothers you, you're probably in the wrong fandom...) Some coarse language.

**Disclaimer: **Yoshihiro Togashi

Thanksto Krysis, for beta-reading this chapter. Any remaining mistakes are my own. Comments, feedback and critiques are always appreciated.

So far no one has tried to claim the virtual cookies. Very sad.

* * *

**The Other Side of Reality  
Part Six: In Which In Which Kurama Has a Not-So-Chance Encouter and Hiei Makes a Sudden Appearance**

He held up a hand, unspoken words dying on his tongue. The urge to call out to his teammate pushed him a step forward, but he held it in. He couldn't even know for sure that it _was_ Kuwabara he had seen.

Kurama pressed his fingers against the door, barely brushing the smooth finish of the wood before it swung open beneath his touch, the hinges silent.

The bedroom was gone. Through the doorway, Kurama could see a sidewalk, trees, stairs, sunlight. He heard cars and the whizzing sound of bicycle wheels and the constant rise and fall of human conversation: two girls talking about a test, a businessman on a cell phone, a traffic cop shouting at someone.

He stepped through into a silent, abandoned street.

The stone steps that led to Genkai's temple climbed the hillside before him, vanishing into the line of dead, leafless trees. He turned carefully on the ball of one foot, prepared for an attack from the rear, but nothing greeted him save the sight of empty, abandoned cars lining the street. The cars were rusted, some had shattered windshields and windows. He could see abandoned shops, some boarded up, others broken open.

Even the light was dim and overcast. Grey-brown clouds blocked the sun, leaving no trace of the brightness he had seen through the doorway.

No doorway, he noticed. It had ceased to exist as soon as he stepped through. If he needed to go back to the house he would have to find another way there. Assuming he could.

Briefly, he felt disconnected, cut off from retreat, but he shook the feeling away. The house had certainly not been a safe haven. He remembered the false Yuusuke in the attic and frowned. No, definitely not.

_Clink._

He glanced upward at the looming stairs and heard the sound again – a sharp, echoing clink. It repeated itself, again and again and a small glass bead bounced down the stairs, rolling to a stop against Kurama's foot.

He crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet and reached down to get a closer look. It was tiny, smaller than a fingernail, and perfectly symmetrical, a pale pearl-blue in color, and the texture of flawless glass. He carefully picked it up between his thumb and forefinger, examining it closely.

"Tear gem," he said out loud.

There was another glassy clink from above, as if in acknowledgement, followed by another, another, until the individual sound vanished into a wave of noise like the sound of raining glass. Kurama folded his fingers over the tear gem in his palm.

Movement further up the stairs caught his eye and as he looked, dozens of tear gems rolled and clattered down the stairs toward him.

Kurama stayed still as they rolled past him, drifting to a stop on the sidewalk and in the street, littering the ground with bright gems, each worth a hundred times their weight in gold and tried not to think what kind of pain it would take to create so many tears.

He rolled his fingers over the gem in his hand, then deliberately let it fall.

* * *

Yuusuke tipped his head back and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the cascade of cold water raining down on them. That ended up not working so well as blood dripped off his hand and onto his face. He blinked and scowled and ducked his head again, wiping his hand off on his jeans. "I don't suppose you have sprinklers, huh?" 

Kuwabara shook his head from side to side, but didn't answer. He wasn't looking too hot at the moment; slumped on the floor with his back to the wall, he was bloody and pale and wet. The cuts in his skin were fading slowly and the blood was running down his arms and chest like paint running off a canvas. Yuusuke noticed for the first time that his jeans were red with blood and even the soles of Kuwabara's feet were marked by the slowly healing incisions.

"What was that?" Yuusuke asked. He crouched on the balls of his feet, arms resting on his knees. The rain hadn't slacked off any and a good half-inch of water was starting to build up.

Hiei stalked toward them, a permanent snarl on his face. His hair was plastered to the side of his head in wet spikes and his cloak was soaked through, clinging to him from shoulder to calf. He paused briefly to glare at Eikichi – the real one, Yuusuke thought, but he'd splashed it with water anyway when it tried to get closer – and paced past them to glare into the ruin of the kitchen. He held his katana in one white-knuckled fist as he paced and Yuusuke figured that if even Hiei was weirded out, then they were probably in a hell of a lot of trouble.

"I think the kitchen is dead," he said helpfully as Hiei examined the room.

Kuwabara groaned and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "We're never going to get our money back on this place."

Yuusuke grinned at him. "I thought you inherited it."

"I'm gonna have to pay someone to tear it down," Kuwabara sighed. "And to perform an exorcism."

"We should probably burn the rubble, too," Yuusuke contributed, grinning as Kuwabara turned his head to look at him.

"Bulldoze it all when we're done," Kuwabara added. "Bury it all ten feet underground."

"Salt the earth," Yuusuke said.

"And maybe build a shrine or something," Kuwabara said. "To make sure no one builds here again."

"To do any of that," Hiei said, "we have to first get out of here alive."

Yuusuke shook his head, rubbed water away from his eyes and sighed. "Way to beat a guy to death with the little details, Hiei." He pushed himself up to his feet and sloshed through the rising water to look over Hiei's head into the kitchen. "Wow."

The ceiling was largely gone. The far end of the room was mostly intact, but the part nearest them was gone, revealing rotting black wood and a dark void where the upstairs bathroom should have been. A broken sink and toilet littered the kitchen floor, along with the wood and the rusted metal that had blocked their way and blood still dripped from the hole, thick and reeking of metal.

Kuwabara pushed his hair back from this face and made a face at the hole. "Can we get up there?"

"Do we really want to?" Yuusuke grimaced.

Hiei slid his katana into its sheath beneath his cloak. "It may be that our actions weakened the barrier around the room, causing it to collapse."

Kuwabara shot a sideways glance at Hiei. "You really think that?"

The fire demon grabbed the hem of his cloak and twisted it savagely, wringing out a small stream of water that the continuing downpour immediately replaced. "No. I think it far more likely that whatever has done this is toying with us."

"So," Yuusuke said slowly, drawing the word out pointedly before his teammates could get into a shouting match, "the big, bad, evil thing that took Kurama is extending an invitation?"

Hiei didn't answer, but his silence told Yuusuke enough.

"All right," Yuusuke said. "Who wants to go first?"

Hiei gave him a disgusted glance and stepped across the threshold into the kitchen. After a moment, when it became apparent he wasn't about to die messily – well, not immediately – Yuusuke and Kuwabara followed.

Yuusuke paused to examine the sheet of metal that had gouged deep marks in the linoleum of the floor, prodding it with the toe of his sneaker. It flaked and crumbled away. He ignored the splatter of warm blood hitting the top of his head and shoulders and squinted up at the black chasm above.

"Someone's left us a message," Hiei said.

Yuusuke glanced over his shoulder at Hiei, who pointed. He blinked and followed the gesture. Someone had scrawled sloppy characters across the door of the refrigerator in half-congealed blood.

_Are you coming? _

* * *

Kurama heard the sound of Yukina's sobs before he set foot inside the temple. He recognized her voice beneath the keening wails, even if the tear gems hadn't been enough of a clue. 

Despite the open doors and windows, Genkai's temple was dark, steeped in shadows and dim corridors. Kurama paced himself carefully, senses stretched as far as he could extend them, but he heard nothing except the sound of his own footsteps and breathing and the sound of Yukina's cries. Only one heartbeat, only one breath – his own. No scent, no youki, nothing that indicated another person was anywhere nearby.

The door to the dojo was cracked open a few inches and Kurama paused, listening to the shuddering sobs coming from the other side. He pushed the door open the rest of the way and slipped into the room, eyes open and wary for any possible attack.

The room was dark, almost black and he narrowed his eyes as they adjusted to the lack of light. Some mats lay on the floor to the left of the room, two simple wooden chairs and a small table were pushed against the wall to the right. The walls, ceiling and floor were stained and streaked with filth. Kurama inhaled slowly, but all he could smell was dirt and mold and dust.

Yukina knelt on the floor across the room from him, face buried in her hands. Her bright hair and blue kimono were the only colorful things in the otherwise wasted room. She had her face buried in her hands and her slim body shook with each breath and gasp. A tear gem slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor, joining several others scattered around the room.

Kurama took another step into the room. "Yukina?"

She jerked as if he'd struck her, scrambling away to press her back against the far wall. Her hands and feet slid against the floor, leaving streaks in the dirt and sending tear gems rolling across the room. "Who's there?" she whispered, curled in on herself. She lifted her head, her pale blue hair falling away from her face to reveal empty sockets and raw, jagged scars where her eyes should have been.

"Yukina," he said, his mouth dry. "It's Kurama."

She rocked slowly back and forth, studying him with sightless eyes. "You're real?"

"What happened?" he asked. "Your eyes…" He hesitated an instant, still just out of arm's reach, then knelt at her side, tear gems clinking against one another as he settled. "Yukina, who did this to you?"

She nodded her head gravely and pointed behind him.

Kuwabara stood in the center of the dojo, looking much as he had the last time Kurama had seen him. His hair was loose, rather than pulled back in the ponytail he'd been favoring lately and a pair of sunglasses had slid down his nose. Warm brown eyes regarded Kurama over the frames before he pushed the glasses back into place. He was dressed in a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, and a brown leather trench coat.

Kurama remembered that coat; Kuwabara had purchased it some years ago when he was still in college and worn it frequently. But it had been destroyed several months ago, shredded by a demon's claws.

He shifted slightly moving his body between Yukina and the man. "Who are you?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm Kuwabara Kazuma," the man said calmly. "But who do you think I am?"

Kurama narrowed his eyes. Unlike Yukina, unlike the Kuwabara in the room back at the house, he could sense spiritual energy inside this man. But still no heartbeat, no sound of breathing, no distinctive scent. "_What_ are you?" Kurama demanded.

"A self-defense mechanism," Kuwabara replied with a small shrug. "A desperate last grasp at sanity. I am what remains."

At his side, Yukina sighed, a heavy, sad sound.

"What remains?" Kurama repeated.

"What remains of me, after this place." Kuwabara gestured at the room, at the entire world. "Not much, I'm afraid."

Kurama rose slowly, watching the figure before him for any hint of aggression, but Kuwabara didn't seem provoked. "A ghost?" Kurama asked. The figure before him wasn't a spirit, he was nearly prepared to swear to it.

"More of a shadow," Kuwabara said.

"What happened here?" Kurama asked, letting some of the urgency he felt seep into his tone. "What happened to the house, to this temple? Why did you tell me to come here?"

Kuwabara pulled the sunglasses away and stared at Kurama. "I didn't."

So the Kuwabara in the bedroom was a doppelganger, as the false Yuusuke had been. "What happened?"

Kuwabara shook his head. "I don't know. The part of me that did isn't here."

"Did someone attack us? Was there a battle?" Kurama gestured at the wall, to the barren yard and forest beyond. "There's nothing alive out there anymore. What happened to the city?"

"It's always been this way," Kuwabara said quietly. "Ever since the world was made."

"There's nothing alive out there, Kuwabara," Kurama said. "Nothing could survive here."

The young man regarded him with tired eyes. "Nothing has."

Thick black lines appeared on the floor, spinning two wide circles, tracing out runes and symbols. Kurama recognized the beginnings of a gateway spell, different than the one which had brought him to this place and he raised his eyes to study the young man across from him. "I'm here."

"Yeah," Kuwabara said and he laughed a little, a breathless chuckle. "I'm sorry about that."

"Did you bring me here?"

Kuwabara hesitated just long enough for the gateway to be completed. The symbols flared briefly and then vanished as the floor and everything on it dissolved into a yawning pit of blackness. Kurama expected Kuwabara to fall and had to stop himself from reaching out to him. Kuwabara, or the shadow of Kuwabara, stood at the center of the dark circle, unaffected by the lack of floor.

Kurama nudged a tear gem with his toe. It rolled toward the circle, vanishing over the edge. Thoughtfully, he tested the edge of the circle, then set an entire foot inside and shifted his weight. It gave slightly beneath him but he did not fall. Like walking on a trampoline, he imagined. "Did you bring me here?"

Kuwabara sighed. "I don't think I'd do that. But it's entirely possible that it's my fault you're here."

The black circle rippled and swayed and Kurama backed away, watching it warily. It stretched, elongated and thick tendrils of ink-black whipped out of the circle. Kurama dodged one; the other coiled around Kuwabara's leg and wrapped around his thigh. Two others joined it, one grabbing at Kuwabara's waist, the third sliding around his right arm and up around his throat. He almost didn't seem to notice.

"Give me your hand," Kurama said, extending his arm over the black circle. "Kuwabara."

"It's all right," Kuwabara said. "I'm just a shadow. What happens to me happens to me. This," he gestured at the black circle, "is just a doorway."

Shadows, doppelgangers, imposters. Kurama grit his teeth. "What happened to the rest of you?" Kurama asked urgently. "What happened to the real Kuwabara?"

"Look around you," the shadow said. "He's been here all along."

The dark circle bubbled and flexed and Kuwabara fell, vanishing into the void before Kurama could react. The dark circle itself disappeared, leaving only black symbols drawn on a dirty floor.

Kurama stood at the edge of the circle, staring at the marks.

Behind him, Yukina shifted. "He made this place," she said quietly. "He made us. This." Her voice trailed off into a keening sob that shook her entire body.

"Yukina," Kurama risked going to one knee before her. "Yukina, who is 'he'?" He stressed the pronoun just enough.

Yukina sighed, a blow-up doll with the air let out. "Kazuma-san."

Kurama looked over his shoulder at the black lines on the floor. "Kuwabara did all this?"

"Not all of it."

He turned to face her again and they weren't alone.

Something like Hiei stood at Yukina's side, watching Kurama with bright red eyes. The doppelganger was hunchbacked, one arm longer than the other and instead of fingers, long talons curled around the hilt of a huge broadsword.

Yukina glanced up at the twisted form of her brother with obvious distaste. "Kazuma-san didn't make _him_."

* * *

"Isn't that nice?" Yuusuke said warily. "It sent us a written invitation." 

"That's not nice," Kuwabara said. "It's tacky. And disgusting. We keep _food_ in there."

"Dude, I've seen the inside of your fridge," Yuusuke said with a wide grin. "And I gotta say, a little blood probably isn't going to make things any more inedible than they already were."

Kuwabara snorted and was gearing up to say something rude, Yuusuke could tell, when the ceiling started to move.

Or, not the ceiling, exactly, but the empty place where the upstairs bathroom should have been.

Long, whip-like appendages snaked out of the void and lashed out at them. Yuusuke ducked to the side, avoiding one flailing limb, but a second snagged Kuwabara, wrapping around his upper left arm. Yuusuke heard something sizzle, like cooking meat, as the tentacle tightened its grip.

Kuwabara grimaced and reached up with his left hand, wrapping his fist around the appendage to pull it off him. But his fingers only sank into the tentacle, the flesh – or whatever – reforming over his hand, trapping it _inside_ the tentacle. "Not good," Kuwabara said. His right hand was still free, and he lifted it, fingers curling around a sword hilt that wasn't there yet, and a flicker of orange reiki materialized in the palm of his hand.

Only a flicker.

Kuwabara paused, staring at his own hand. "Shit."

"No powers?" Yuusuke glanced at his own hand, aimed at the emptiness above them and focused. "Rei gun!"

Pure energy pulsed through his veins, obeying his summons and swirling into a bright point of light at the tip of his index finger. He aimed for the dead center of the void and let loose enough spiritual power to make anything but a full-fledged demon lord sit up and take notice. The void swallowed it, unaffected.

"Okay," Yuusuke said. "Yeah. Shit." At least his powers had worked though, unlike the rei ken.

Another tentacle wrapped around Kuwabara's waist and this time he grunted and pulled back, his feet slipping on the blood-soaked floor. "Get this thing _off_ me," he said harshly. The material of his jeans was literally being eaten away where it had been touched by the tentacle and Yuusuke stared at Kuwabara's covered arm in vague horror as the tentacles started to drag him across the floor.

Hiei darted in, dodging a flailing tentacle, and his katana sliced neatly through the appendage that gripped Kuwabara's waist. Too neatly, Yuusuke saw – the tentacle had just reformed around the blade as it had around Kuwabara's hand. An oily black smear remained on Hiei's blade, but otherwise nothing seemed to have happened.

Kuwabara's footing slipped and he hit the floor on his side with a grunt. He gripped the floor with his free hand, fingers curling into one of the deep gouges left by the fallen metal. "A little help?" he called. "Any time now, guys."

Yuusuke aimed for one of the tentacles this time, instead of the void – a smaller shot this time, finely focused. It hit the tentacle dead on, and faded. "Reiki isn't affecting it."

A third tentacle dropped and coiled around Kuwabara's right arm, pulling his hold loose and dragging him toward the void. Yuusuke reached out and caught a fistful of Kuwabara's jeans, wrapping his fingers in the material. But his footing on the slippery floor wasn't any better than Kuwabara's had been, and he was losing the tug-of-war. "Okay!" he shouted. "Brainstorming session! Right here, right now!"

"You could let go," Hiei suggested, even as he launched another attack against the tentacles holding Kuwabara. It wasn't going much better than the first time, Yuusuke noticed.

Yuusuke wedged his foot against a chunk of fallen debris and pulled back harder. "We'll save that for Plan B," he said through gritted teeth.

"Why do all the slimy tentacle monsters go after me?" Kuwabara asked, sounding rather like he was asking the time. He had dug his heels into the linoleum, trying to slow his movement down; combined with Yuusuke's grip, it was almost enough to bring things to a stalemate.

"Haven't you ever watched any anime?" Yuusuke said, forcing a grin as he glanced down. "Tentacle monsters always want to rape the virgin."

Kuwabara gave him a dirty glare. "Oh, fuck _you_."

"Yuusuke!"

Yuusuke jerked his head up at the sound of Hiei's warning an instant too late. A tentacle slammed into the side of his head, knocking him to the floor. He gagged as it began to wrap around his head and face, _burning_, slick and oily and stinking of mildew. He rolled and scrambled to his feet, clawing it away from his face but the damage was already done. He'd lost his grip and as he watched, the tentacles jerked Kuwabara, swearing at the top of his lungs, into the air and into the darkness. The tentacles withdrew and Yuusuke lunged for the void. He caught onto one of Kuwabara's feet, but his fingers were bloody from scrabbling on the floor and his grip slipped and slid away.

"Follow him!" Yuusuke snapped, even though Hiei was already moving, half a step ahead of him. Yuusuke jumped, thinking to aim for the edge, grab onto the edge of the ceiling and swing himself up, but as soon as his fingers brushed against the ink-black of the void he was pulled up into nothingness.

And dropped.

He hit the floor on his back and shoulders, rolling instinctively so his spine didn't take all the damage. For a long moment, he couldn't get his orientation and his stomach tried to crawl up his throat while his body rebelled against whatever the hell had just happened to him.

He gagged slightly but swallowed the bile and breathed out slowly through his nose. It felt like nothing much worse than vertigo – or a nasty inner ear infection: the same nausea and dizziness. He made a mental note not to try to stand up too quickly.

"Hiei?" He was faintly pleased with himself for saying that in a totally normal voice.

"I do not think we are in the bathroom." Hiei's voice sounded rock steady. Not that that told Yuusuke any damned thing because Hiei wore stoic the way most people wore socks.

"So where are we?" It took Yuusuke a minute to realize that he was still on his hands and knees, and that the reason everything was so dark was because his eyes were closed. Opening them, he found himself faced with, well, a whole lot of darkness with some pitch black for variety. "Love the decor. We should get whoever did this place to redo Kuwabara's kitchen."

Hiei didn't bother to reply. Pivoting slowly on one foot, the fire demon was slowly surveying their surroundings, something almost uncertain in his expression.

Yuusuke pushed himself up until he could squat with his hands resting on his knees. "What's up?"

"Perhaps nothing. Our current whereabouts are something of a mystery at the moment."

"Think this is the big piece of nothing Kuwabara sensed?" It sure as hell looked like a whole lot of nothing, as far as Yuusuke was concerned. Just black, everywhere. No floor no ceiling – although there was definitely something solid beneath Yuusuke's feet, he couldn't see it. It was very much like being suspended in nothingness, and it made him tense. The only thing he could see at all was Hiei and the fire demon's black hair and cloak made him blend into their surroundings so much that it almost looked like Hiei was just a floating face. Freaky. Yuusuke couldn't say he cared for the effect.

Hiei shrugged, the movement barely visibly except for the way his hands moved. "I don't think that description is entirely accurate."

"You said that before," Yuusuke pointed out. "So you got any ideas what this is? Cause I'm at a loss."

"How surprising," Hiei murmured under his breath.

Yuusuke scrunched his face up and shot a nasty look at the back of Hiei's head.

"Yuusuke? Hiei?"

Hiei pivoted on one foot, his katana held ready in one hand.

Yuusuke glanced over his shoulder.

Youko Kurama stood a few meters away, his silver hair and tunic a vivid contrast to the darkness around them. He took another step toward them, his gold eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "I didn't think you'd make it so soon."

"Hey," Yuusuke said, grinning as he stood to greet his friend. "You know us. We always—"

Kurama bared his teeth in a snarl, razor-sharp fangs tinted red with blood.

* * *

To be continued in _Part Seven: In Which Various Smackdowns Occur and Kuwabara Suffers Nicely_. 


	7. Kuwabara Gets in Some Trouble of His Own

**Author's Note:** A 'henge' is a Japanese demon, a shapeshifter who almost always impersonates a woman or girl. Not unlike a tanuki or even a kitsune, often thought to be mischievous if not outright malevolent.

**Warnings:** Still more demons. Blood. Fighting. Yuusuke's probably swearing at some point.

**Disclaimer:** Dear Yoshihiro Togashi, I hope you will forgive me for the things I am about to do to Kuwabara. Rest assured, it's nothing compared to what I do to him later on. Much love, your devoted fan.

This is still a little rough and really needs a good beta-reading, but I wanted to post it in time for Christmas/Yule/New Year/Whatever. Hope you all enjoy! Thanks for sticking around through the VERY long break from writing.

* * *

**The Other Side of Reality  
****_Part Seven: In Which Various Smackdowns Occur and Kuwabara Suffers Nicely_.**

* * *

Something like Hiei stood at Yukina's side, watching Kurama with bright red eyes. The doppelganger was hunchbacked, one arm longer than the other and instead of fingers, long talons curled around the hilt of a huge broadsword.

Yukina glanced up at the twisted form of her brother with obvious distaste. "Kazuma-san didn't make _him_."

Kurama clutched Yukina against his chest, ignoring her startled gasp as he threw himself backwards. Tear gems scattered across the floor and underfoot as he rolled into a crouch, one hand braced against the wood floor, the other still holding Yukina.

The doppelganger leered at him with Hiei's face, sharp teeth parting in a parody of a smile. "I see you've met the playthings. Aren't they pretty?"

Yukina shivered and Kurama regarded the doppelganger's talons. Its use of the plural was disconcerting, unless it was referring to the shadow-Kuwabara. "Playthings?" he repeated. "Are they your toys?"

"Not mine. I didn't make them." The creature dismissed the idea with casual disdain. "Toying with figments is no fun anyway. Not that you've finally joined us, perhaps things will liven up."

"Sorry to have kept you waiting," Kurama said. He regarded the creature with as much disdain as possible and braced himself to move quickly. "For a mere imitation yourself, you seem to have a low opinion of others."

The broadsword struck the ground where he had been only an instant earlier, embedded a foot deep in the floor. "I am not an imitation," the creature spat.

"Really?" Kurama kept Yukina behind him. "I should tell you that the short, sword-carrying fire demon route has been done already. And the hair is just blatant mimicry. I'd reconsider if I were you. Hiei is rather protective of his image. I doubt he'll appreciate a second-rate-" he dodged to the side, pulling Yukina along as the broadsword whistled through the air just inches behind him. "-_hack_ trying to profit off his reputation."

"I know of Hiei," the doppelganger sneered. "A youkai, bound by flesh and distance and time. He is as far beneath me as the mortals are beneath you."

"I like mortals," Kurama said. "I've known a few who could really kick ass." He pushed Yukina to the side as the doppelganger rushed him. "I wager good odds you wouldn't even make them work up a sweat."

He sidestepped the blade and caught the front of the doppelganger's shirt. There was no youki to the creature, not as Kurama recognized it, but he could feel some kind of energy, not unlike Hiei's Jagan, and the stench of hellfire. "You're a demon," Kurama said. "With a talent for possessing children, mindless youkai and animals, am I right? You aren't a god. You aren't even dangerous." He held the doppelganger's gaze. "If it weren't for this place you'd be so far beneath my notice that I wouldn't have even bothered to fight you." The doppelganger jerked its sword arm free and Kurama ducked the blade. "What were you doing before you came here? Possessing chickens and frightening farmers?"

"I'll cut out your heart!"

"I'm a youkai." Kurama swung his legs out, knocking the doppelganger's feet out from under it. "We don't have hearts."

The doppelganger rolled to its feet and spat. "I know all about you, too. In that body you're as mortal as any other human. And that makes you just as weak."

Movement behind the doppelganger caught Kurama's eye and he risked diverting his attention. The shadow-Kuwabara stood in the doorway, watching them thoughtfully. "Your information is faulty," Kurama said. "Whoever's been feeding you intelligence on me has been misleading you."

With a visible effort, the creature reined itself in. "The details are unimportant now that it's come this far."

Kurama shook his head. "Any good thief could tell you the details are everything." He tipped his head to the side. "For instance, if your information hadn't led you to believe I was powerless in this form, you never would have let me get so close."

The doppelganger's eyes widened, but Kurama didn't give him time to react beyond that. The seed he'd attached to the doppelganger's shirt exploded into bloom, a bulbous sac-like plant sprouting outward even as its roots dug into the creature's chest.

Thick talons reached up to tear away the sac and the doppelganger growled low in its throat as he dug long strands of roots from its own chest. "That was a pathetic effort," it grated through an abused throat.

"He's formless," Yukina said from behind the doppelganger. She stared at the floor in front of her, oblivious as the creature staggered around to stare at her.

Kurama cursed to himself. He'd suspected as much when he'd realized the demon was a possessor. They rarely had bodies of their own, preferring to inhabit and control others. But he knew the form it wore now was not really Hiei, more likely a construct created for the purpose of unsettling Kurama. He'd hoped that the form this creature had taken on would prove to be a weakness, a way to attack it. But if the body was just a shell, then he could tear the creature to shreds without doing any real damage.

"I'm tired of your voice." The doppelganger rasped, tearing away the last bloody roots and flinging them to the floor. The broadsword flashed briefly. "You've outlived my amusement."

Kurama darted forward, but even before he moved Kuwabara was there, arms crossed in front of himself in a futile protective gesture, between Yukina and the doppelganger's blade.

* * *

Kuwabara wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep – actually, he couldn't swear he had been asleep. It almost felt like he'd been drifting, half-awake, for hours.

Sunlight in his eyes woke him, finally, and he groaned and rolled out of bed, scratching the back of his neck and rolling his shoulders. He must have slept uncomfortably, because his neck and back ached like a bitch.

The alarm clock on the dresser said it was 6:50, which meant he was already running late. He contemplated this fact, not yet concerned enough to actually move, noting the sound of someone banging around in the kitchen and the smell of bacon. Kurama would have been quieter, Urameshi louder, and Hiei would have just sat in the window glaring at him until he woke, so likely Shizuru had let herself in.

He weighed the odds that she'd made enough to share, realized that was pretty damned unlikely, and figured he'd better go fight for his share of the food before it was gone.

The floor was cold and his shoulders screamed at him as he slid out of bed. He dragged on a pair of jeans and glanced in the mirror long enough to run a hand through his hair. The reflection showed him a serious case of bed-head and two Eikichis yawning at him from the foot of his bed. He turned and looked back at the bed, where only one Eikichi sat, ignoring him.

_I need to get more sleep_. He made a face at the mirror, dragged a hand through his hair, and went downstairs.

He staggered down the stairs and paused in the doorway. "Coffee," he gasped. "Must… have… coffee…"

Shizuru sat at the kitchen table, one leg propped up on the second chair. She didn't bother glancing up from her newspaper, just waved her cigarette in the general direction of the counter. "It's in the pot."

He swatted at her hand as he passed. "No smoking in the house," Kuwabara said, mostly because he really wanted one and was trying to quit. "What's for breakfast?"

She flicked the ashes off the end of her cigarette and drew in a deep breath. "Bacon. Toast. Coffee."

"Going the healthy route this morning, I see." He examined the mostly full pot of coffee with something like joy. "Sis, have I ever told you I love you?"

"Eat your breakfast."

He grabbed a plate and what was left of the bacon and then took the entire pot of coffee to the table with him. "Why are you here so early?"

"Where else would I be?" she asked.

"Okay, you said it, not me." He poured a mug of coffee and risked a sip; kind of bland but still better than no coffee at all. "You working today?"

"Already working." She reached for her own mug of coffee and took a deep gulp.

He rolled his eyes as he munched his way through the bacon. "I'm not paying you to cook for me."

"You can make your own breakfast from now on, if that's how you're going to be." Shizuru exhaled a steady stream of smoke as she turned the page of her newspaper.

He rolled his eyes and grinned. "That's not what I meant. Thanks for breakfast, Sis, but I need to get down to the station."

"You can try," Shizuru told him, twitched the paper aside so she could look him in the eye. "But I don't think it will work."

He eyed her. "What?"

"Finish your coffee."

"I know mind games are your specialty and that you only try to confuse the ones you love, but would you mind being a little less weird today?"

His sister frowned at him and tapped her cigarette against the ashtray on the table. "You know I'd do anything I could to protect you-"

He hadn't done anything worthy of getting some big discussion of _feelings_, he was sure he hadn't. "Sis-"

"-that's why you made me, after all. But you have to be more careful."

He stared at her and thought that maybe one of them had lost their minds. It wasn't him. "What are you talking about?"

"This place." Shizuru shook the newspaper in a way that was undoubtedly meant to convey the whole of creation. "Idle thoughts are dangerous here. You need to focus. You need to control yourself."

"All right, you know what? It's too early in the morning for zen bullshit." He ignored the plate of food and half-empty cup of tasteless coffee and pushed his chair back. "I'm going to go to work and you can go to the club and weird out people who get paid for dealing with you."

"Keep telling yourself that," Shizuru said. "The problem is that you already believe it."

"Are you drunk?" he demanded suspiciously. He'd never actually seen his sister inebriated, no matter how much she drank. "Are you _high_?" She did work for Atsuko now, anything was possible. He narrowed his eyes. How dangerous was a psychic under the influence of mind-altering drugs, anyway?

"My mind hasn't been altered since you made it," Shizuru said. "But don't take my word for it. See for yourself."

"Yeah, no. Thanks for that idea too terrifying to even _contemplate_." He stood. "You can stick around as long as you like. Just don't go offering to let any neighbors read your mind, all right?" He spared her one last wary look as he made for the stairs. Maybe the world would make more sense after a shower. It probably couldn't get weirder.

He was halfway up the stairs before he realized he hadn't sensed Kurama's presence at all since awakening.

Surprise made him pause. Why should he? Kurama hadn't been around for a while lately. And even if he had been, Kurama was a grown man, he didn't have to check in before he went anywhere.

But something in the back of his mind insisted Kurama should be there. It pricked at the back of his mind, an image of a building, a fir, but it vanished too quickly for him to latch onto it. But he wondered, vaguely, why he was so worked up over Kurama.

Movement caught his eye at the top of the stairs and he glanced up.

Yukina stood at the top of the stairs, her kimono stained with blood, her bloody hands held curled in front of her.

"Yukina!" He took the last few steps at a run, his heart beating in his throat. "Yukina, what happened? Are you hurt?" He touched her shoulders, ignoring the chill that bit into his skin and urged her to look up at him.

She pressed her hands against his stomach, the cold making his muscles clench, and tipped her head back, revealing empty, scarred eye sockets. Tears slid down her cheeks to drop against his hand.

He pulled one hand away slowly, watching the teardrop roll off the back of his hand and hit the floor, nothing but water.

"Yukina?" He searched her face, dread sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach.

His sister's voice floated up the stairs behind him. "I told you idle thoughts were dangerous."

"Shizuru, call Genkai. Tell her Yukina is hurt." Hurt didn't even cover it. Her _eyes_. What the hell had happened? He touched her cheek with his free hand but she didn't react. "Yukina, can you hear me?"

"Genkai's not here. Even you aren't stupid enough to try and control her."

Anger and disbelief warred for dominance, anger won. "We don't have time for this!" He turned to glare over his shoulder and froze.

Shizuru frowned at him. "You're right." She wore chain mail over her street clothes, polished and gleaming silver. A silver shield was strapped to her right arm, and she held a sword grasped tightly in her left. "So stop it. Stop all of this. You need to wake up, Kazu, and stop hiding behind us."

Something squirmed against his stomach and he tore his eyes away from Shizuru. Yukina's hands were still pressed against the front of his shirt, but the blood coating them had turned black and oily and was wriggling its way down her hands and into his skin. He jerked away from Yukina's touch, stumbling down a step and grabbed at the front of his shirt. "What was that?"

"Reality," Yukina said.

* * *

Yuusuke nodded. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that's not Kurama."

"How observant," Hiei said. "What was your first clue? The lack of youki? Or the fact that he stinks of hellfire?"

"Mostly the bloody fangs." Yuusuke poked a finger against his own teeth. "Kurama brushes after every meal." He watched the silver demon come closer, long purposeful strides not unlike the real Kurama's. "So, you know. Hi."

"Henge," Hiei said. The fire demon's mouth twisted as he said the word. "Shapeshifter."

Yuusuke frowned from one to the other and gave the shapeshifter his best sympathetic look. "Oh, hey. Listen, buddy, I have bad news. I know he's pretty and all, but Kurama's not actually a girl. Easy mistake to make, I know." He could _feel _Hiei's exasperated glare against the side of his head. That didn't stop him from making a vague outline of an hourglass with his hands and nodding. "It's the hair."

"You better hope Kurama's dead," Hiei said. "Because if he hears you, you're the one who'll need to be rescued."

"I'm impressed." Not-Kurama paused a few feet away, his hands on his hips. "I didn't expect you to come so quickly. Or with so little struggle. We'd been led to believe you would have to be brought here by force."

Yuusuke boggled. "You sent a creepy acidic tentacle monster to drag us in here!"

Not-Kurama ran his tongue over his fangs, licking them clean of blood. "And yet, you walked in here on your own two legs."

Yuusuke pointed a finger in his face. "You- you- have a point. All right. So we didn't look both ways before we crossed the street. You kidnapped our friend!"

Hiei shifted slightly and made a noise that might have been a cough, or might have been an objection to classifying Kuwabara as a friend. Yuusuke wasn't sure which.

The shapeshifter laughed, a short puff of air. "Nonsense. He was already here. If you'd any sense at all, you would have waited for an opportunity to attack from a position of strength."

Yuusuke snapped his fingers. "Hiei?"

"What?"

The shapeshifter was watching them with a little half-smile that made Yuusuke want to punch him in the mouth. "Is it possible to attack from a position of strength against a haunted house?"

"The house was not haunted." Hiei paused. "But if it were I suppose we could have burned it down."

That hadn't quite occurred to him. "Would that actually have helped us?"

Hiei and the shapeshifter answered at once. "No."

"Okay, so my point remains." He waved his hands. "Giant. Tentacle. Monster. Not to mention raining blood and man-eating cats!"

Hiei ignored him. "Who told you about us?"

The shapeshifter lifted one eyebrow. "You still haven't figured out what's happening here?" He spread his hands, gesturing to the two of them, or the entire nothingness they were trapped in. "You still don't know why you're here?"

Yuusuke grit his teeth. "I think if we knew we wouldn't be asking you, would we?"

"Considering the notorious untrustworthiness of shapeshifters," Hiei said, "I don't know why we're even bothering to question him."

Not-Kurama shook his head. "I'll give you a hint, shall I? I'm not a shapeshifter." He took a step forward and vanished.

"Okay, that's a bad sign." Yuusuke spun on one heel, quickly scanning the area around them. "Did the bad cosplayer just vanish into thin air?"

"I think it's worse than that." Hiei's Jagan flared briefly beneath its ward. "I think he's still here."

Yuusuke chewed on his bottom lip. "Invisible?"

"Maybe." Hiei-speak for 'I don't know'.

"This guy. He's one of the bad guys, right?"

Hiei grunted. "If he's friendly, he has an odd way of showing it."

Yusuuke flashed his teeth in a brash grin and raised his voice to make certain anyone listening in would hear. "So when he shows his face again I can bash it in, right?"

Something flew out of the darkness over Hiei's shoulder and struck Yuusuke in the chest. It was hard and heavy and he grunted a little at the impact even as he instinctively reached up to catch it in his hands.

A head. A _head_. Kuwabara's head, with the eyes half open and a trickle of black blood dried at the corner of his mouth.

A strangled scream caught in his throat.

"Another trick," Hiei snapped. "Like the phones. It's not real."

Yuusuke tried not to laugh hysterically. "Looks real."

"It is." Not-Kurama's voice floated out of the darkness. "Everything here is real. Don't you _understand_?" The shapeshifter, or whatever he was, appeared out of the darkness at Yuusuke's side.

Cold flesh and blood weighed his hands down, but that didn't stop Yuusuke from kicking the son of a bitch in the face.

* * *

"Kuwabara!" Kurama froze even as Kuwabara's body heaved and blood spilled around the blade.

His friend turned his head to the side and met Kurama's eye. Something flared in his eyes that hadn't been there before.

Kuwabara lifted the corner of his mouth in a smirk. "This is just a doorway."

The doppelganger snarled and yanked the blade free, blood splattering across the floor. He pulled his arm back, the blade of the broadsword swinging through the air.

"No!" Kurama lunged forward, his temporary paralysis costing him too much. "Kuwabara!"

The blade cut through the air with a sharp whistle of displaced air and sliced through Kuwabara's neck.

The head slid forward and struck the floor with a soft, fleshy sound, rocking slightly and bouncing off the doppelganger's shoe. Kuwabara's body dropped into a heap, thick black blood spilling obscenely fast. It curled across the floor, swirled lines of script tracing across the boards. Think black lines curved and swirled between his feet as Kurama lunged at the doppelganger, the creeper vine exploding off his arm and wrapping around the creature's head and throat.

The doppelganger thrashed and struck blindly with the broadsword, slicing through the vines and tearing the plants away from its face. "That won't work," it growled, its voice echoing strangely in the room.

"If you're a demon, then you can die," Kurama snarled.

"Perhaps," it conceded. "But not like this." It tossed the vines aside. "You can't strangle something that doesn't need to breathe, Youko Kurama."

"I can snap its neck." A thought sent the vine twisting up to wrap around the doppelganger's forehead, yanking it off its feet and slamming it against the wall, against the thin black lines curling up the wood. "Do you need your spinal column, demon?"

"Not in this world," the doppelganger said. "Nothing's real here, remember?" It smiled at him, obscene and mocking. "Except him." It kicked Kuwabara's head, sending it rolling toward the body.

Yukina moaned quietly and Kurama spared her a quick glance. The ice maiden had buried her face in her hands, and though her shoulders shook, no new tear gems fell to the floor.

Kurama glanced up. The black lines had covered the ceiling, and as he watched, joined with others to complete the spell circle. The lines blended into each other, turning the entire room into a gateway.

The walls and floor of the dojo throbbed. The lines of the spell began to glow black as the air itself pulsed in time like a giant's heartbeat.

Yukina raised her head from her hands, her eyes bright red and unusually hard. "It is time for Kazuma-san to wake up," she said.

The doppelganger snarled at her. "We should have wiped out all the little playthings when he made you."

She spread her arms to her sides, palms out toward the doppelganger. Across the room, hundreds of tear gems swirled together, melting and melding into thick spears of ice. The ice maiden nodded her head twice, slowly and deliberately. "Yes. You would have been wise to do so." She pulled her arms forward, pulling the ice spears as well. The doppelganger screamed as he was impaled against the wall, pinned at a half dozen different points.

"Yukina." Speaking was difficult as the air pulsed in and out of his lungs each time the gateway symbols flared to life. "How many others are there?"

Yukina regarded him with a small smile. "Other what?"

The entire room shook with the next beat, the walls rattling and the floor bucking under his feet. Kurama stumbled and-

-fell to the-

-thick, rusted metal grate, coated in grime, corroded with decay.

Kurama curled his fingers into the grate, staring down into the utter darkness that seemed to go on forever. Something told him it wasn't as empty an abyss as it seemed and he carefully uncurled his fingers and stood.

Blackness replaced the walls of the dojo stretching out and above him in all directions. Yukina and Kuwabara's body were gone, as was the doppelganger.

For a moment, he stood there, getting his bearings. There was no point of reference, no break in the endless darkness except for the metal grate, and that seemed to go on forever as well. "Demon!" he shouted. There was no echo of his own words and no reply. If Yukina and the doppelganger had been brought along, they were out of his sight and hearing.

Spiritual energy surged and spiked some distance away, striking against Kurama's senses like a small explosion. _Yuusuke_. And he was angry.

Good, Kurama thought grimly. He wasn't the only one.

* * *

To be continued in _Part Eight: In Which Kurama Works Out his Frustrations and Yuusuke Screams Like a Little Girl_

c&c is always appreciated!


	8. Kurama Explains It All

**Author's Note:** So it's been about two years. That doesn't make me the slowest writer ever, but it does put me in the category of World Class Procrastinator. I just want to say thanks to everyone who's reviewed this story or sent me email to let me know you're still reading. There's only one more chapter after this. I hope the wait has been worth it. ^_^

**Disclaimer:** _Yu Yu Hakusho _is the property of Yoshihiro Togashi, Funimation, etc. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

**The Other Side of Reality**

_Part Eight: In Which Answers Are Finally Had But No One Is Very Happy About It_

* * *

Kurama dropped out of the sky behind the shapeshifter without a sound or a warning, and crouched on his hands and toes for a long moment, sharp green eyes assessing the scene before him while his fingers clenched against the black floor. He looked tired to Yuusuke and there was blood smeared down the front of his shirt, but it was the look in his eyes that told Yuusuke Kurama had not been having a good time over here.

"Well, it took you long enough," he said with great relief, before it occurred to him that l maybe Kurama had been planning some kind of sneak attack. Oops.

The shapeshifter twisted around to regard Kurama with cold metallic eyes. If it was hoping to spook Kurama with an image of his other form, Yuusuke had a feeling it was going to be disappointed.

Kurama didn't even look mildly interested in the shapeshifter, let along surprised, and if Yuusuke had given away his sneak attack, he didn't seem to mind. He just pushed off the floor and rose to a stand in one smooth movement, like a dancer stretching before rehearsal. "Perhaps I was waiting for my teammates to enact a rescue mission. In which case, you are the ones who are late."

"We never really got around to the rescuing part of this fiasco," Yuusuke said. "Also, do you know what the fuck is going on?"

"I have some idea," Kurama said.

"Am I gonna like it?"

"Probably not," Kurama said. He flicked his fingers almost absently and a sharp green spear shot out of his sleeve and impaled the shapeshifter just beneath its ribcage. Yuusuke jumped a little at the suddenness of it, but Hiei reacted on cue, darting in and driving his katana through the shapeshifter's chest – exactly where its heart would have been if it really were a youko. The shapeshifter staggered and fell. It hit the ground with a meaty thud and Yuusuke skipped back a few paces, reluctant to let the damn thing too close in case it could still bite.

Kurama viewed the body with a clinical detachment. "It's not dead," he said. "It isn't a perfect solution, but we've managed to take it out of the running for the time being. Yuusuke, what in heaven is that?"

"I would really like someone to tell me this isn't real," Yuusuke said. He still had Kuwabara's head in his hands and he couldn't bring himself to look at it any more than he could bring himself to drop it.

"Is Kuwabara-kun here?" Kurama demanded.

"We came in after him," Yuusuke said. Hiei took over, bringing Kurama up to date on what had happened since his disappearance that morning. Kurama, Yuusuke couldn't help but notice, didn't seem to be getting any happier.

"I don't think much of anything here is real," Kurama said when Hiei was done. "Probably that as well."

"Probably?" Yuusuke echoed. "That's not as reassuring as you meant it to be."

"I wasn't trying to reassure you," Kurama said. "It would be easier if this place were real. Then we could be certain of a way out."

"You know what?" Yuusuke said. "I don't think I want to know what's going on after all. Just point me at the bad guy and let's go."

"That's the problem," Kurama said. "I think I know who's doing this. And I don't know how to stop it without hurting him. For heaven's sake, Yuusuke, put that thing down. We need to find Kuwabara." He eyed the head grimly as Yuusuke gingerly set it down on the floor a safe distance away from the shapeshifter's remains. "All of him."

A flash of color caught Yuusuke's eye and he turned to see Keiko standing a few feet away. She was wearing chain mail armor over her old school uniform, and the edges were tarnished and smeared with the same black gore that had spilled from the shapeshifter's corpse.

"I can help you with that," Keiko said. "But we have to hurry. Kuwabara's waking up and I'm not sure any of us will still be here when that happens."

* * *

Kuwabara knew he wasn't really awake.

He was somewhere in the middle, awake enough to know he was still asleep, and the harder he struggled to focus on the world around him, the further he slid back into the dream.

"Tell me where it is," the old man said through the bars.

"No," Kuwabara said, shaking blood out of his eyes. "How stupid do you think I am?"

"I don't know why you insist on being so stubborn," the old man said. "You know I'm going to win. Even if I don't find it, it's only a matter of waiting for you to give up and die at this point."

"I'm not going to die," Kuwabara snarled and the old man laughed. "Let me out of here."

"No," the old man said. "You made this place. You can rot in it."

* * *

They were moving through the darkness at what felt like a brisk pace, but without landmarks, it was hard to judge their relative speed. Hiei had vanished into the darkness ahead several minutes ago scouting out what was waiting for them up ahead and Kurama was busy turning recent events over in his mind, which left Yuusuke with nothing to do except talk to himself. In fact, it took Kurama several seconds to notice when Yuusuke's comments stopped being rhetorical and started being addressed to him.

"So are you ever going to tell me what's going on here?"

"No," Kurama said as Keiko led them through the dark at a jog. Her chain mail clinked like silver coins in a purse as she moved.

"Why not?" Yuusuke was keeping pace with Kurama, but he was having a hard time tearing his eyes away from the image of his wife. "That's not actually Keiko, right? I mean, the tentacle monster didn't pull her in here and turn her into an extra from Monty Python or something. That'd be weird."

"You said you didn't want to know what was going on. You just wanted to get the bad guy, remember?"

"Yeah, and then you told me I wasn't allowed to hurt the bad guy, which I think is pretty unfair. That's kind of my thing, you know?"

"I didn't tell you not to hurt the bad guy. I'm not sure there is a bad guy," Kurama said.

"The tentacle monster is the bad guy. The acidic tentacle monster is very high on my list of suspected bad guys."

"The tentacle monster isn't real, either." Kurama slid a glance sideways at Yuusuke and then raised his eyebrows at Keiko's back. "A lot of things aren't what they look like."

"If you don't tell me what's going on right now," Yuusuke said, "I'm going to bite you. And no one will blame me."

"Look out!" Hiei's shout cut through the distance an instant before the darkness heaved around them.

Years of teamwork kicked in as Kurama and Yuusuke threw themselves in opposite directions, Yuusuke pulling the Keiko doppelganger with him, dodging the rose vines that shot out of the darkness and grabbed at their arms and legs. Hiei dropped out of the sky and hit the ground at a run, his swords bared and already stained with oil-black demon blood. The vines grabbed at him as he threw himself into the center of them, but sheer speed – and the razor edge he kept on the twin katanas – kept them from latching on.

"I thought you said we stopped him!" Yuusuke shouted. He pushed Keiko behind him as the vines lashed at his face and chest. His reiki glowed brightly as he swatted the vines away.

The other Kurama had reformed far faster than expected. Kurama held the vines at bay with a kekkai as he focused on the darkness surrounding them. The vines weren't real – not like the ones wound through his hair and around his arm. Those he had brought into this world with him, but these were… another construct. Like Keiko, like Yukina and the doppelganger Hiei. They weren't real and that meant he wouldn't be able to control them at all. "I may have been mistaken." He recognized the surge of youki from Hiei and shielded his eyes an instant before a fireball erupted from the center of the vines, cremating them instantly. A growled curse told him Yuusuke hadn't covered his eyes in time.

"A little warning, please?" Yuusuke called, blinking his eyes to clear the last of the afterimages away. "Great. I can't see a freaking thi-"

The shapeshifter melted out of the darkness beside Yuusuke, prompting a shout from Keiko too late to serve as warning, and dropped Yuusuke with a foot to the stomach that threw him back a dozen meters. Before Yuusuke could get his feet under him again, it turned on Keiko with bared teeth and a growl building in its throat. "I should have wiped out all of the playthings when he made you." He reached for her with grasping talons and the gore on her clothing started to spread, climbing over her chain mail and starting to creep onto her skin.

Kurama swore as he lunged forward; he'd only stopped himself at the last moment from putting his hand to the ground and willing the roots and grasses to the surface – roots and grasses that didn't _exist _here and it was only a moment's hesitation but more time wasted than there should have been. Instead he caught Keiko around the waist and pivoted, swinging her on his hip like a small child. He dropped her once he was between her and the shapeshifter and gave her a push toward where Yuusuke was staggering back to his feet with a hand pressed against his stomach.

"Your partner said much the same thing," Kurama told the shapeshifter. "Just before that plaything dealt with him most efficiently."

"It didn't stop me," the shapeshifter snarled. "It could only slow me down. And that's all you can do as well."

"I'm no plaything," Kurama said. "I'm no formless apparition forced to steal just to have a _face_-"

The shapeshifter shrieked as it lunged, a high-pitched screech of rage and embarrassment as it launched itself at Kurama. The youko didn't bother dodging. Instead he planted his feet against the ground and brought both hands up to meet his imposter's charge. His fingers dug into the shapeshifter's chest, holding it at arm's length as the vines wrapped around his arm surged forward and punched through skin and bone.

Bile, black and greasy bubbled over the constructs lips as it staggered and tried, too late, to pull away. Kurama ignored the droplets that splattered his arms and face, burning red and white scars into his skin wherever they touched. "If killing you won't stop you," he grit out, "then we'll have to settle for tying you down." He pulled away from the shapeshifter, letting the vines slide free of his arm, the kitchen knife clattering to the floor. The shapeshifter gagged as the vines burrowed into the ground and dragged the creature down with them. It writhed briefly, then began pulling against its bonds.

"They're still growing," Kurama told it. "The ends will just keep going deeper until I tell them to stop. You'll never pull them loose."

It didn't mean the shapeshifter couldn't eventually break free, either by tearing the vines in half, or by tearing its own body until their grip slid free, but either one would take time to accomplish. The vines were nearly as hard as steel when fully matured – the shapeshifter had its work cut out for it. He crouched down on the balls of his feet and leaned over the restrained adversary. "How many of you are there?"

The shapeshifter snarled at him, then screamed as Hiei drove a katana through the creature's left leg, nearly severing it at the knee.

"Wrong answer," Kurama said mildly. "How many of you are there?"

"If it doesn't answer this time," Yuusuke said, squatting by the shapeshifter's head, "I'm going to do to him what he did to Kuwabara."

_That_ was Yuusuke angry. Kurama let a grim smile turn the corners of his mouth upwards. The doppelganger hadn't even been close.

"You don't have a sword," Kurama pointed out.

"That's cool." Yuusuke reached over and picked up the kitchen knife, flipping it over his fingers idly. "Nice toy, Kurama. Not your usual style."

"All's fair in love and dealing with amorphous shadows."

The shapeshifter lashed out at Kurama with curved talons, but Kurama had anticipated the reaction and leaned out of reach.

"I think you hit a nerve," Yuusuke laughed. "What's the matter – the demon's _self-conscious_? Oh! Oh! I know." He lowered his voice. "Penis envy, am I right?"

The shapeshifter lunged upwards, gore dripping from the wounds in its chest as it tried to reach Yuusuke. "I'll have what I came for soon," it snarled through blood-smeared lips. "And when I do, I'll cut you apart and laugh as you stand defenseless against me."

"Heard it," Yuusuke said, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Blah, blah, blah. Are we done here?"

"Yes," Kurama said, cold seeping through his blood and into his voice. "It's told us what we needed to know."

The shapeshifter screamed and the darkness around them split into tentacles that lashed toward them. Kurama raised a hand, youki sparking off his fingers like static and the darkness crashed into an energy barrier only inches away from his back.

"Burn it," he told Hiei.

Hiei hesitated only a fraction of a second as more tentacles spun out of the darkness toward them. Then he wrenched his katana free of the shapeshifter's leg and stepped back as hellfire erupted out of the air around it and began to consume it.

Yuusuke made a vaguely disturbed sound and looked away, but Kurama and Hiei watched as the creature burned. The tentacles struck at the barrier with increasing frenzy for a moment before they vanished back into the darkness around them.

Silence settled for a moment, then Yuusuke drove the kitchen knife into the ground and stood. "What did it tell us?"

"It's after Kuwabara."

"I thought it was after you."

"No. It's formless. And it wants a body. It's going to take Kuwabara's. That's what all this is about." He turned to look at Keiko, standing at Yuusuke's side with an expression that told Kurama he was getting close. "Kuwabara made you," Kurama said, wiping blood off his face. "Yukina told me as much at the temple. She said Kuwabara made everything here except for the doppelgangers. But you aren't one of them. You're a – construct."

"A self-defense mechanism," Keiko said.

The other Kuwabara's words back at the temple came to him. "A last desperate grasp at sanity. You – and the other constructs – Kuwabara made you to distract the demon. To give him time to fight it off."

"It isn't working," Keiko said.

"No kidding!" Yuusuke gestured around him, at the dark, at the shapeshifter. "The walls were bleeding, bathrooms are eating people and Kurama just tried to kill us. You seriously expect me to believe Kuwabara's making all this happen? Dude's only power is a glowing sword of freaking justice."

"Dimensional sword," Kurama and Hiei said at once.

"And that makes more sense?" Yuusuke demanded.

"It actually does. A little. Cutting through dimensional barriers – that could explain how we got here. And as for the rest of this – a psychic with a void of utter nothingness could create anything to fill the darkness in."

"Okay, yeah. Fine." Yuusuke planted his hands on his hips. "A powerful psychic can do almost anything. But Kuwabara's not a powerful psychic. Kuwabara gets bad dreams sometimes. Occasionally he talks to us in our heads. That's not the kind of power you'd need to build an entire world."

"But it's not an entire world, is it?" Kurama gestured around them. "This is nothingness. The constructs, and a small portion of our home – the house, Genkai's, a few places in between, most of them empty and corrupted. And none of it is real, Yuusuke – how much of what we're seeing and reacting to exists at all? How much of this is happening in our heads?"

"I am getting a headache," Yuusuke said with a grim kind of determination. "It is going to last until we go home, and I get drunk enough that any of this makes sense."

"Going home might be a problem." Hiei hadn't sheathed his katana after the attack and now he was watching the dark around them with a judicious eye. "Unless you suddenly know how to cross dimensions."

"This day just sucks so bad," Yuusuke said. "The next time your bathroom eats you, Kurama, you're on your own. I'm not even answering the phone the next time Kuwabara calls me."

Kurama ignored him. It was his preferred method of dealing with Yuusuke when he was aggravated. "Keiko, a question." The construct was looking the worse for the other Kurama's attack. Her chainmail and uniform were nearly entirely covered with demon blood and thin lines of it had started tracing out into her skin. "The demon is trying to take you over?"

Keiko nodded.

"What does he gain by that?"

"Control," Keiko said. "If I'm a defense mechanism-"

"Every time he takes one of you over, Kuwabara's defenses fall." He cut his eyes toward the remains of the shapeshifter. "The Kurama doppelganger. He said he should have destroyed you and the other playthings as soon as Kuwabara made you. The construct of Hiei said the same thing back at the temple."

"Of course he did. He doesn't have many threats, I've noticed."

"Wait," Yuusuke said. "He? Not they?"

Keiko raised an eyebrow at him. "How many of him do you think there are, Urameshi?"

"They're all the same," Kurama said. "Controlled by the same mind. Just like you and Yukina are the same."

Keiko tilted her head to the side and watched them with wide eyes. "Are you ready to ask your question, Kurama?"

"My question?"

"At the temple. You asked us a question. But you didn't ask it right."

Kurama narrowed his eyes as he replayed the conversation in his mind. "I asked Yukina how many of you there were here. She didn't answer. She just said-"

_How many what?_

"Keiko," Kurama said. "How many decoys are there?"

The Keiko construct smiled at him and tipped her head to the side in a move that was completely Kuwabara. "Six."

"You. Yukina."

"Hiei," Keiko said. "Kurama. Yuusuke. Shizuru."

"Attacking the constructs wasn't a way to hurt Kuwabara, or at least it isn't the demon's primary goal," Kurama said to the others, ignoring the face Yuusuke was making. "He's taking them over to find out which one of them has – what? What is Kuwabara using them for?"

"I don't know," Keiko said.

"Who is it?" Kurama asked. "Which construct has whatever it is the demon wants?"

"I don't know," Keiko said.

"It's got to be one of the girls, right?" Yuusuke gestured at Keiko. "The Yuusuke, Hiei and Kurama constructs were all taken over, right? If you're right about all this-" his voice said he had serious doubts about that "- and he'd gotten what he wanted from any of them then we'd already have lost."

"The problem is that neither one of you can count," Hiei said. He snapped his fingers and six sparks of hellfire jumped in the air before him, forming a little circle of flame. "Six _decoys_, Kurama. Which means that there's a seventh construct." A seventh spark ignited in the center of the circle. "The one that's hidden. That's the one we're looking for."

"Okay. Great." Yuusuke eyed the hellfire with an unhappy expression. "Who else do we even _know_?"

"Maybe _we_ don't know them," Kurama said. "Kuwabara's friends – Okubo, Sawamura, Mitarai-"

"_No_," Yuusuke said. "This whole thing sucks enough already. I refuse to believe that spineless, whiny, genocidal, punk-ass, suck-up, cow-eyed-"

"Genkai," Hiei said.

The three of them exchanged a glance before turning on Keiko as one. The construct shrugged at them and twisted her mouth into the same exasperated look Kuwabara had been known to wear from time to time. "I don't know."

"Kuwabara told me to go to Genkai's," Kurama said. "When I first arrived here. He told me twice. He even gave me a clear path to the temple. But when I got there all I found was Yukina." And Hiei. And the other Kuwabara, which Kurama still didn't have a total explanation for. But he'd been so distracted by Yukina, and later by the fight, that he hadn't looked any further. "We need to go back to the temple." He turned to Keiko. "Can you tell us how to get there?"

"I can." The Keiko construct looked worried. Her chain mail was sparkling silver now, no trace of the taint of the demon's corruption remained. She touched it hesitantly. "I don't know what's happening. But he's not after me anymore."

"That's good, right?" Yuusuke very obviously resisted the urge to fuss over her. "Maybe we convinced him to leave you alone."

"Of course," Hiei said, dry as sandpaper. "All our standing around talking must have driven him off." He jerked his chin over his shoulder. "Trouble."

Something was moving in the darkness behind them. Kurama stood slowly, stepping away from the shapeshifter's remains to stand beside Hiei and Yuusuke. "Keiko," he said urgently, gesturing for the girl to step behind them. She shook her head and stepped in front of them. "We're there," she said. "But we aren't the first to come."

"What?" Yuusuke started to ask, then reality shifted under their feet and the darkness was instead the courtyard in front of Genkai's temple. "Well, _shit._"

The Yuusuke-monster stood naked in the middle of the courtyard. Kurama's stomach lurched as he saw the monster carried the decapitated head, clutching its hair and carrying it like a bag. The head's eyes were open and staring, and they blinked deliberately.

"Wrong turn." They spoke in unison, the creature holding Kuwabara's head up at eye level. "There is nowhere to go, Kurama. This is your hell, and no god will pardon you."

"I need no pardon," Kurama replied. "Because this is no hell. And no god has had any hand in the making of this place."

"I am a god here," they said. "Soon I will be unstoppable."

"Meaning you aren't unstoppable now," Yuusuke said. "Thanks for the tip."

The creature laughed, tongue lolling grotesquely out of the side of its mouth as it caught the head between its hands and crushed it with a heart-wrenching sound of breaking bone and squelching blood. Kurama couldn't actually hear any of that over the sound of Yuusuke's furious howl, but he could imagine it.

"I go to kill your friend," the Yuusuke-monster said. "Will he even struggle, do you think, when I kill him wearing your face?"

"Dude, last week Kuwabara slammed my head into the wall because I tried to cop a cigarette."

"A cigarette?" Kurama teased, almost unable to stop himself. "That's not how I heard the story."

"You shut up!" Yuusuke waved a finger in Kurama's direction without taking his eyes off his duplicate. "There's not a chance in hell that Kuwabara's going to roll over and die for you just because you look like me. You stupid son of a bitch. Anyone else might have stood a chance. But _me?_ Man, he'll kick your ass and _laugh_ doing it. He's been waiting to kick the shit out of me since we were kids."

"He made me," the Yuusuke-monster said, his mouth twisting into a grotesque smile. "Which one of us is the stupid one?"

Yuusuke snarled and Kurama could feel reiki crawl over his skin an instant before Yuusuke attacked. Spiritual energy flashed at the point of Yuusuke's finger then burst outward. The doppelganger was enveloped in blue-white energy and when the light faded, the courtyard was empty.

"What are the odds I just killed it?" Yuusuke asked. By the slump of his shoulders and the resignation in his voice, he wasn't expecting an answer.

"We need to hurry," Kurama said, putting every ounce of urgency churning in his stomach into his voice.

Yuusuke and Hiei both glanced at him, surprise showing in their expressions, but it was Shizuru who agreed with him.

"You really need to hurry," Kuwabara's sister said. Her chain mail was the same gleaming silver as Keiko's, but Shizuru wore a shield on one arm and a sword at her hip. She stood at the foot of the temple stairs and she was nearly transparent. "Very soon, Kazuya is either going to wake up, or die. And when that happens, there won't be anything to stop the invader from taking what he wants."

"The Yuusuke decoy has been corrupted," Keiko said and Shizuru nodded in grim understanding.

"That's bad?" Yuusuke asked.

Kurama didn't quit meet his eyes as he walked past Keiko and Shizuru to climb the temple steps. "At the heart of things, Kuwabara is an honest man, even in the face of unpleasant truths. And right now, he is fighting a version of you based on Kuwabara's knowledge of you, and his experience of you. So tell me, Yuusuke, how many of your fights has Kuwabara ever won?"

Yuusuke went pale as he understood what Kurama was telling him.

"We should hurry," Hiei said.

* * *

Kuwabara was still in the dream.

He was in the practice dojo at Genkai's, hanging by his arms from two chains attached to the ceiling. His feet were free, and he kicked experimentally, trying to get enough force to yank the chains out of the ceiling, but they wouldn't even budge. Just for the hell of it he tried to summon the spirit sword again, but there wasn't even a flicker of spiritual energy this time.

"Damn," he muttered under his breath.

It was certainly possible for this situation to go even farther downhill, but he wasn't sure exactly how. Well, to the best of his knowledge, all four of them were still alive, so there was room for maneuvering there, certainly. Maybe something was going to catch on fire soon. Or Urameshi could show up in his underwear. That'd suck.

He tested the chains again, tugging at first, then putting all of his weight on one wrist and pulling. The chains gave a bit under the force of it, but not enough to break him loose and if he was any judge – which he was, because his life kind of sucked sometimes – the chains were breaking loose from whatever they were bolted too. Which meant that even if he did pull them loose, he'd be dragging the chains along behind him.

That could work. He'd seen fighters use long chains before – though probably not that long, as the space above him disappeared into darkness before he could see the ceiling. And he'd never used chains as a weapon before, but he was willing to bet he could figure something out. And even an unfamiliar weapon would be useful, if only because he could chuck it at someone's head before he sucker-punched them.

He briefly entertained a thought of finding whoever was responsible for this and strangling them with their own stupid chains, but that would have to wait at least until he figured out who that was.

He kicked his feet in the air for a minute, stretching against the chains to see if he could get any leverage. His toes just barely brushed the ground and he bit back a groan. This would be a lot easier if he could get his feet on the ground. He grit his teeth and strained against the chains again, trying for just another inch of give.

Something brushed against his back, like a person pushing past you on a crowded street. He twisted around as much as he could and peered over his shoulder. Nothing but more empty space.

He rolled his head, working some of the tension out of his neck. No getting nervous. There was nothing in the room with him. Nothing he could hear, nothing he could see, nothing he could sense. He couldn't smell anything either, human or otherwise. Getting strung up in what looked like some crazy ritual chamber would make anyone nervous. _Get over it and get loose._

He turned his attention back to the chains, keeping an ear out for anything that might approach. The left chain had seemed to have a bit more give in it than the right, maybe it hadn't been properly bolted in place, or maybe there was a link about to give somewhere. Either way, he'd take what he could get. He clenched his teeth, counted to three, and was about to pull with everything he could get when someone poked him in the back.

"Shit." He flailed briefly, as much as a man hanging from the ceiling can flail, and spun briefly on the chains as he tried to turn around and failed. He craned his neck over his shoulder and though he'd jump off a bridge before admitting it, he was relieved to see Urameshi grinning up at him from an inch or two lower than normal. "Dumbass!"

Urameshi leered at him, no doubt terribly amused by the entire situation.

"Get me down from here," Kuwabara said, trying to shake one hand to demonstrate the fact that he was being held prisoner. Sometimes Urameshi missed the little details.

Urameshi jabbed him between the shoulder blades a second time and grinned, then darted around to the front so fast Kuwabara almost gave himself whiplash following him.

"Well?" Kuwabara said, letting more than a little of his aggravation with the entire situation seep into his voice.

Urameshi clenched his fist and swung.

A hundred streetfights and ten years of good-natured brawling meant that Kuwabara could read Urameshi's physical movements like a book. As soon as he realized what was coming, he wrapped his hands around the chains, lifted his feet up in the air and kicked Urameshi in the chest with both feet.

The half-blood staggered back a dozen feet and ended up in a crouch on the stone floor. He'd have gone through the wall if Kuwabara hadn't checked his strength. "Okay, I am so not in the mood. Can't you just say hello like a normal person?"

Something was making the skin on the back of his neck crawl and he didn't loosen his grip on the chains, just in case he had to kick Urameshi through the wall after all. Frankly, it didn't seem like a hardship. "Urameshi," he said, pitching his voice calm and serious, the tone that meant he liked screwing around as much as the next guy but now was not the time. "Get me down." The little voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded like Kurama or his sister, depending on whether he was in trouble, or about to make a fool of himself, was screaming at him to get out. Urameshi was still crouched on the floor. "Yuusuke."

Urameshi – the thing that looked like Urameshi, or the thing that was controlling Urameshi, Kuwabara wasn't sure which yet – bared its teeth and leaped at him.

* * *

To be Continued in Part Nine: In Which They Deal With Kuwabara


End file.
